


That ebb and flow

by harrycrewe



Series: Spring Tide [1]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M, Mpreg, Pon Farr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-30
Updated: 2012-03-30
Packaged: 2017-11-02 17:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrycrewe/pseuds/harrycrewe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After an unexpected pon farr, Bones ends up pregnant, but he and Sarek fail to form a successful relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That ebb and flow

Ever since they received their latest marching orders Spock has been more than usually constipated, and even Jim, who despite outward appearances is in many ways more unflappable than Spock, seems twitchy. They’ve been assigned to play escort to a cadre of diplomats, on a usual day Jim’s least favorite of assignments. However, all that obviously changes when among the diplomats is Sarek, Spock’s father, and Jim’s recently acquired father-in-law.

Len watches their anxiety build with kindly and (for the most part) concealed amusement; they’re taking this thing seriously. Maybe it’s because Vulcans are so clannish, or maybe it’s because Spock has Daddy issues: Jim once told him, early in his relationship with Spock in a moment when things weren’t going so well, that Spock spent his entire childhood trying to do the perfect Vulcan thing to make his Daddy proud. Since his own father’s approval was a factor in Len’s own choice of career, maybe he can sympathize with Spock there a little.

He arrives with time to spare at the entrance to the shuttle bay, but both the Captain and the First Officer are ahead of him, Jim bouncing from foot to foot and Spock seemingly impassive. After three and a half years on ship together, well: he can’t read Spock’s expressions as well as Jim, but he’s still probably in the top five in the universe at deciphering Spock, and if he had to guess right now, he’d say, nervous as hell. Len runs a finger under the high collar of his dress uniform, which always feels uncomfortable to him, falls into parade rest beside Spock, and whispers to them both, “good luck.”

Jim flashes a quick grin when Spock looks over and replies, “Thank you, Doctor McCoy, but I believe this should be a fairly routine transport, ‘luck’, as you call it, will not be required.” The turbolift doors open to admit Scotty and Uhura, who fall into their respective positions, Scotty beside Len and Uhura by the Captain, ready to step on his toe if any faux pas becomes imminent. They can hear the hanger bay doors closing and, a minute later, the hiss of decompression in the hanger. When the light on the door turns from red to blue, Kirk unlocks the hanger and they enter, to greet the diplomats now disembarking from their shuttle.

There are two humans and two Vulcans; the humans in the same rigid dress uniforms as everyone else (although with more pips on the collar) and the Vulcans in heavy white robes, the sort McCoy knows serve the dual purpose of keeping them warm on a ship like the Enterprise, where the temperature controls are probably set just a tad below their comfort. Spock’s uniforms are insulated: though it’s never been discussed, McCoy signs off on the medical approval for the extra purchase every year. 

“Excuse me,” Kirk says, politely. “Where is Ambassador Sarek?” 

Len has assumed he was still aboard the shuttle, but it seems not. The female Vulcan bows her head. “We must apologize Captain, the Ambassador has been detained by a personal matter. If you will consent to remain in orbit another 1.7 hours, he will join us by transporter.”

“Of course,” Kirk says genially, and Len thinks he can see his shoulders relax a hair. “Well, then, let me introduce you to my officers, and then we can show you to your quarters, to rest until the Ambassador joins us.”

The diplomats are all gathered on account of Delta Vega. It’s the kind of stupid posturing that sits at the top of Len’s list of reasons for hating politics. The planet, which was once lent to Starfleet by the Vulcans for use as a manned outpost in their system, was after the destruction of Vulcan reclassified as too remote a location upon which to leave a single crew member, or a small group of crew members alone.

Hearing Scotty’s occasional tales of how lonely it was up there, Len’s not sure why proximity to a planet when regular shore leave wasn't readily available is any different than proximity to no planet at all, but no matter. Admiral Sidorov’s office recently floated the idea of expanded the original station to house a full complement of twenty-four crew members, and it seemed likely to happen until the Vulcan embassy decided that the planet should left untouched as a memorial to their home world instead - Delta Vega being the closest stable body, and best vantage point from which to view, the Vulcan black hole. While Starfleet professed itself to be sympathetic to that perspective, they were also unwilling to admit that the Vulcans still held much claim on Delta Vega; and the disagreement had escalated until a formal discussion of the matter was undertaken. Why they have to go to Delta Vega now in order to complete that discussion is also unclear to Len, although Spock has explained that the Vulcan delegation intends to hold some sort of small commemorative ceremonies there. 

 

 

Leonard misses Sarek’s arrival later on, although he guesses that Jim and Spock were probably there to meet him. Later that day when he heads to dinner in the mess, Jim happens to be there, and happens to invite him to eat: Leo doesn’t smell the rat until he looks past Jim and sees Sarek and Spock sitting stiffly together at a four-man table. 

“Jim,” he hisses, “you traitor.” 

Jim turns halfway around from where he’s been grabbing an apple from the counter; one of the precious “real food” items they were able to bring aboard while in orbit. Len notices with dismay that the rest of Jim’s tray is stacked with French fries and grilled cheese sandwiches.

“Yeah, well, just do me a favor and help me keep the conversation going,” he says. “Sarek only wants to talk if it’s logical, and Spock kind of freezes up when he’s here.”

“Oh, all right,” Len agrees in part because he’s just curious to meet Sarek, see who this Vulcan is who’s got all of Starfleet, not to mention Jim Kirk, pissing in their pants.

He understands it before he’s been sitting down for, oh, a minute and a half. The Vulcan has got serious presence. 

He looks basically like an older version of Spock – middle-aged, perhaps, but not ancient. His hair is gray and his face is lined, not heavily. He sits very straight, each movement is controlled and deliberate. Aside from these actions, his stillness is impressive. If Leonard wasn’t psi-null, he would swear it was some kind of Vulcan heebie-jeebie trick. In Sarek, he understands for the first time something about Vulcan philosophy, that the ability to keep a thousand competing emotions under control is a strength, not merely a strain. 

“Dr. McCoy,” Sarek says when he is introduced. “I read with interest your recent paper on Andorian hepatavirus.”

Len glances at Jim and Spock in quick succession; it’s an opening, and better yet one that he can run with.

“Yes,” he says. “It’s a very adaptable disease. The epidemiologic studies are ongoing, but early reports suggest they’ll find strains on at least two hundred federation worlds. It almost seems designed to jump species, which is odd when you consider that it was probably exclusive to Andor less than thirty years ago.”

“Fascinating,” Sarek nods, and McCoy has to swallow a surprised laugh, because the intonation is very much like Spock’s. “Spock was infected several times as a child; to multiple strains. It took several months to diagnose the illness, due to a presentation that was dissimilar to that observed in either humans or Vulcans.”

“Is that right…?” Len asks, looking at Spock again. Talking about Spock’s childhood sniffles seems to him a lot like dragging the baby pictures out from under the coffee table: unless he misses his guess, in fact, it’s the kind of “illogical” chit-chat that Jim just predicted Sarek wouldn’t want to engage in.  


The tips of Spock’s ears are green. “The infections were… uncomfortable,” He admits.

“Amanda,” Sarek seems to be saying this to Jim rather than Leonard, “reproduced various Earth remedies during these periods.”

Leonard smiles as Jim jumps in to ask what these were: lemon tea boiled with ginger and honey, it seems, or sometimes p’alla, when lemon could not be obtained. Spock notes that ginger is known to contain several beneficial compounds…

He isn’t disturbed when his comm beeps; it’s Nurse Chapel, informing him that an Ensign has broken his arm while exercising, and he excuses himself. The three of them seem to be getting along, and he feels a sense of relief for Spock and Jim, who were so worried about things. Perhaps Sarek isn’t so frightening, after all. 

“The Delta Vega ceremony will be at 1300 tomorrow afternoon,” Jim mentions, just before Len leaves. “Shuttles leaving by 1100.” It’s in Len’s head to bite back a reply about how he’d rather skip it, but although Jim’s mentioning the ceremony as if it’s casual, more likely than not his presence is actually required. Plus Ambassador Sarek can probably overhear them. So he merely nods and reminds himself to get his dress uniform back from the yeoman that afternoon.

 

 

There’s something about shuttle transport that Len hates, although slightly less, on reflection, than he hates the transporters. The disadvantage of shuttles is that they make it obvious exactly how little metal lies between him and space, particularly when looking out the window affords you a clear view of the black hole that used to be Vulcan. Sarek and the rest of the Vulcan contingent sit with their eyes forward: they don’t even seem tempted to look out the window as Len can’t help but do. Lt. Wilkes, the pilot, seems on edge, probably feeling as Len does that he drew the short straw in having to travel with all the hobgoblins. Jim and Spock and Scotty are on the other shuttle with the Federation Admirals, and probably Spock is trying desperately to keep Scotty from saying something impolitic as Jim mostly laughs. The ceremony isn’t going to be at the old Federation outpost, it’s to be at the coordinates closest to where Vulcan was, from which the black hole is most visible. As a result, they’re all bundled into parkas and snow boots. On the plus side, this also ensures that the ceremony will be brief. 

Len looks out the window again. Black holes are technically invisible to the human eye, but something about the radiation around the system creates the effect of a faintly purplish halo, like a ring of northern lights, that drops into nothing, inky darkness with no stars behind, in the vicinity of the hole. It’s eerie.

The shuttle rocks marginally. “Lieutenant?” Len asks.

“Just entering the upper corona,” Wilkes replies. “A little more turbulence than expected, but nothing to,” his sentence ends abruptly, when thrusters appear to drop out abruptly, the shuttle gives a dizzying shake and falls for a terrifying moment before they cut back online. “Wilkes!” Len yells without thinking, the sound of his own voice almost surprising him, “What happened?!”

“I don’t know, Sir. I think the gravitational pull from the hole is stronger than we calculated. The left thruster has gone offline but the back-up is on, so,”

“Change course,” McCoy orders, “Get us out of the atmosphere and back towards Enterprise.” It occurs to him a moment later that the Vulcans on the shuttle might contest this order, but when he looks towards them Sarek merely nods, they seem to be in agreement. 

“If the shuttle has sustained damage, the ceremony must be postponed,” he intones.  


But then it’s clear that the backup thruster may also be failing; the shuttle lurches, calms, and the lurches again. Wilkes notes in a shaky voice that they are failing to clear the atmosphere. McCoy slides into the seat beside him and tries to hail the Enterprise; disruption prevents the signal going through. They whip around to the northern pole of the planet and suddenly Vulcan’s sun is dazzling over the horizon. Then the shuttle drops another few terrifying feet and his stomach leaps into his throat. 

“Take us to the outpost,” he orders. “The Enterprise can collect us from there.” Automatic systems are failing, and as much as Len despised his mandatory pilot’s training at the Academy he’s grateful for it now. The shuttle shudders and groans its way downward; and when the thrusters fully fail in the last thirty seconds, Wilkes manages to crash them within a quarter-mile of the post. Len understands just enough about piloting to understand that this is very impressive degree of accuracy.

The Vulcans have remained silent throughout their crash; now that the shuttle is planet side, they begin to consult. It’s quiet, as though they are discussing reservations for dinner or something equally mundane. Part of it makes Len, whose pulse is hammering in his ears, want to yell at them, another part admires how tough a species they are. He continues attempting hails to the Enterprise, but they still aren’t going through.

“I believe the solar radiation may be the issue,” Sarek says. Len jumps at the sound of his voice. “Excuse me?”

“The Vulcan sun undergoes cyclic patterns of radiation discharge,” Sarek explains. “Hepta-annually, the normal patterns of solar radiation are altered. Intense low-volume radiation temporarily predominates, this may be disrupting your communication systems.” The Vulcans behind him shift as he says this, nervously, it seems to McCoy.

“But it’s a temporary problem,” he says to Sarek. 

“It will abate in approximately one solar year, if the position of the black hole has not disrupted the sun’s cycle. However, the problem will be familiar to your engineers on Enterprise. With modification, they should be able to break through the interference.

“How long?” McCoy asks.

Sarek cocks his head. “No more than two standard days.”

“A Vulcan would know immediately,” one of the delegation behind Sarek notes. 

He pauses. “That is true. However, we cannot assume that my son is aboard, his shuttle may have met with the same fate as ours.”

McCoy hadn’t thought much about that, the realization hits him hard. And Spock is Sarek’s son, my God, he has to be worried.

“I’m sure the other shuttle is fine,” he says, meaning to reassure Sarek, but also Wilkes, who is shuddering beside him.

“It is illogical to assume so,” the unpleasant Vulcan woman behind Sarek asserts. “Their technology is exactly comparable to ours.”

He stifles a sigh. “Ok. Two days, then, or two hours if Spock is on his toes.” He looks around the shuttle: Sarek, two additional Vulcans, both of whom are relatively elderly, and Wilkes, whose tremoring suggests mild shock. McCoy rummages in a side panel for the shuttle first aid kit and administers Wilkes a light sedative.

“What do you think?” He asks Sarek. “We can stay here, or continue to the base. The walk should be short, but the climate is cold. Here we have rations that should be sufficient for at least a week; at the outpost there should be replicators and slightly more space for the five of us to move around in. Not much,” he frowns, trying to remember what else Scotty said about the station. “I think it’s very basic.”

Sarek stares at Len while he asks the question, and then seems to push himself before answering. Len wonders if he needs a hypospray to, but he is not sure that what he has will mesh with a Vulcan physiology.  


“I propose that we make our way to the outpost,” Sarek says, gravely. “Although the shuttle is likely to be sufficient for our needs until we are rescued, the outpost will afford us better opportunity to attempt communication with the Enterprise. Furthermore, we have appropriate outer-gear as well as phasers to ward off any attack by local fauna.” 

“Fine by me,” Len shrugs. He sets up a message to automatically attempt every five minutes, then packs up the med kit, as well as some rations and water, just in case, before Wilkes opens the door and they all tromp out into the cold, white world.

It’s beautiful, in fact, no snow storms in sight, just clear pale sky and an unbroken sheet of sparkling snow before them. This is good, Len quickly realizes, because being able to see tracks enables them to avoid a few predators along the way. The air is so cold that it bites with every inhalation; but there’s a strange loveliness in this marginally-habitable landscapes. Nevertheless, he is relieved when they make it to the Outpost in a short time, and the hatch swings open in response to his first attempt at an override code. He should be worried that Kirk and Spock are all right; but with their track record, he can’t help but think that they are. He goes about the post restarting systems, warming things up again, and hopes that the Enterprise arrives soon.

 

 

Doctor McCoy is humming some sort of human tune as he goes about the station, the other human, Wilkes, seems to be functional as well, as he goes about his assignment of testing the communications systems. 

T’Opa desires to speak with him. 

“Sarek,” she questions. “Are you well?”

There is the – desire – to assert firmly that he is. However, this would be dishonest. Instead, Sarek closes his eyes, and carefully accounts for his well-being.

“My respiratory system is under mild strained,” he tells her. It is an evasion, but not a lie. 

“I surmised as much,” she states. “Your breathing rate was elevated 24% above what is predicted for a male of your age, based on our physical exertions. Do you wish the Doctor to administer a broad-spectrum antibiotic?”

Dr. McCoy hears his title mentioned, and approaches.

“Is something wrong?” He asks.

“No,” Sarek tells him. “I am well, if slightly fatigued. I will engage in light meditation until the Enterprise arrives to retrieve us.”

He has modulated his tone carefully, nevertheless, T’Opa and Saiban both look at him more carefully; they have noted the undercurrent in his voice. 

“All right,” says the Doctor, sounding grumpy. “Let me know if you want me to take a look.”

“That will not be necessary, Doctor, but thank you.”

The outpost is comprised of six small rooms. Three are filled floor-to-ceiling with equipment, and are un-navigable as a result. Three more comprise working space; cramped and dusty. One is living quarters; a bedroom designed for two crewmembers – there are two small bunks crammed into the room, barely a meter between them – and a sanitation area. In deference to his tiredness, Sarek is offered one of the bunks; Saiban, who admits to fatigue (he is over a century in age), accepts the other.

Saiban falls into a light sleep; Sarek decides instead to meditate. He puts himself into a light trance. It takes effort to lower his respiratory rate to normal levels, his pulse is elevated as well. Furthermore, there is a sense of prickling excitement along his skin, what Amanda used to call “pins and needles”. Were he younger, or less experienced, he would discount these symptoms. It would be reasonable to speculate that they are a response to the crash, brought out by inadequate emotional control. However, Sarek has been in worse – much worse – circumstances, and his control has never faltered thus. The cause lies elsewhere: and as one well into his sixtieth cycle already, no mystery lies the onset of the pon farr.

It has come late – he hoped it might not come at all. He is young to see an end to the cycles; however; the abrupt loss of a mate has been known to induce this effect. The timing is poor, yet not disastrous, his control will not fail before returning to the Enterprise, and with meditation he will maintain composure until they are returned to New Vulcan. The search for his new mate will be – hurried - and will be left by necessity in the hands of T’Pau, and his clan. Logically, the clan head knows each male well enough to make a choice that meets well with his mind. It is not illogical to note, however, that T’Pau’s choice of Sarek’s first mate, and Spock’s betrothed, were less than satisfactory. That T’Pau should yet again be left to exert her influence upon Sarek’s bonding is unsatisfactory, however unavoidable.

“Sir?” It is the doctor again, friend to his son and his son’s mate. The human is leaning over him, and Sarek realizes that his trance has fallen deep. 

McCoy’s brown eyes are much like Amanda’s, they shine with every emotion he unconsciously projects: at the moment, concern. He has loosened his dress coat, and Sarek notes a red line beneath his Adam’s apple, presumably where the collar chafed. He acknowledges a desire to bite the neck at this juncture. 

“Dr. McCoy,” he says.

The doctor straightens. “No word from the ship yet, but we’ve got the replicator online, in case you’re hungry. Looks like Scotty did some things with it, because it gives us scotch as well as – well,” he coughed. “Plenty of human foods are available, if y’all aren’t too picky.”

“That is satisfactory, Doctor,” Sarek says. “I believe nourishment would be beneficial. He follows McCoy out of the small bunk, into the main room, where he and Wilkes appear to have cleared a space upon a narrow table. He hands T’Opa and Sarek each a bowl of something thick and green; the flavor is palatable. 

 

 

The Enterprise doesn’t respond to their hails that night, nor the day following. The outpost, cramped as it is, offers very little in the way of distraction: Wilkes watches stored vids, Len tramps around outside a little while it’s sunny and for as long as he can stand the cold. The Vulcans all meditate. It’s boring. Len has plenty of work to do back on the Enterprise, it bothers him that he has free time and no way to put it to good use.

On their second evening at the station he notices that something is off with Spock’s Dad. He can’t help but see that Sarek is eating very little, that he has spent perhaps 18 of the 36 hours they’ve been trapped meditating, and perhaps another eight asleep. It’s possible that the cold is adversely affecting him. McCoy makes an excuse to do something in the room where Sarek is meditating – T’Opa and Saiban have chosen another location – and confirms that the Vulcan is sweating, and breathing heavily, although he has done nothing but sit for hours. Stubborn Vulcans – there’s nothing logical in refusing to admit to illness, and yet Sarek seems prone to the same bad behavior as his son. 

Unfortunately, Len’s got more experience with Spock – confronting Sarek is more intimidating. Still, he isn’t one to avoid his job as a healer – he pulls from the medkit every treatment likely to have an effect on Vulcans, and goes to speak privately to Sarek.

The older Vulcan doesn’t respond when Len opens the door. He paces back and forth for a few minutes, waiting for Sarek to acknowledge him, and then he gives up, and kneels on the floor in front of the Vulcan. His face is very still, his eyes closed – the room is cool, even cold for Len, really – and yet Sarek has the option to set the temperature controls higher and has chosen not to. His hands are folded neatly in his lap, yet as Len looks at them, he notices that they are trembling.

“Ambassador Sarek, sir,” he says, formally. “Permission to examine you.”  
Sarek takes a very long time to rouse himself. McCoy has observed Spock’s healing trances, in sickbay, and they often end the same way, in several slow steps of awakening. Len is impatient, but he reminds himself that there’s no hurry at all, really – not like there’s anything at all to do on this dump.

“Doctor,” Sarek says, finally, his voice gravely as if he has not used it in a while. “I appreciate your concern, but it is unnecessary.”

“Like hell it is,” McCoy objects sharply, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he remembers, again, that Sarek is a visiting dignitary, not his son. “I know a sick Vulcan when I see one.” He removes the medical tricorder and begins scanning, but the first readings barely register when he feels Sarek’s hand on his wrist, burning hot and so tight that it’s painful. He squeezes, and Len drops the tricorder. In one quick, animal movement, Sarek reaches out and crushes the machine on the heel of his hand. The little components go skidding along the concrete floor of the outpost; McCoy gapes.

Sarek , too, stares at the broken tricorder, as if unsure of what he has done. “My apologies, Doctor,” he says, and his voice shakes a little. “I did not – I did not intend to – I apologize for the loss of your equipment.”

McCoy’s brain is working fast, flipping through the image of what he’s just seen and comparing it to his memories of what happened to Spock a year and a half ago. In Spock’s case, he had some warning – Jim and Spock visited him in sickbay about it soon after they bonded. As the CMO, Spock had said, stiffly, they felt it best to prepare McCoy for any eventuality, although Spock hoped they could rely on his discretion.

“The pon farr,” he says, flatly, and Sarek’s eyes jump to his face, the expression on his face feral for an instant before control returns. “Excuse me, Ambassador. Your son went through his own – experience – some time ago, and as the ship’s doctor he told me a little bit about it.”

“My son,” Sarek croaked. “He did not… inform me.” 

Len wonders if Sarek is hurt, not to have been told. “He and Jim – uh – handled it,” he says, lamely.

“There is a ceremony,” Sarek says. “He did not wish to…” his thought trails off, unfinished. “I hoped his human heritage might spare him the indignity.”

The indignity, Len thinks – that’s a hell of a way to describe something that makes you insane, then causes you to die in terrible pain. It almost makes you admire the Vulcan gift of euphemism. 

Ambassador Sarek is looking at him with an open, hungry expression. It’s unsettling to realize that a man usually so in control is looking at Len, as a doctor, to provide guidance. He wishes he had some to give.

“How much longer do you have?” he asks.

Sarek looks down at his folded hands. “I am unsure,” he admits. “My cycle has arrived unexpectedly; furthermore, it is proceeding rapidly. I believe the proximity to the sun may be the cause of this.”

“The Vulcan sun?”

“The pon farr is a physiological response to the intense radiation sporadically emitted by our star. Prior to the development of technology that allowed us to screen this radiation, Vulcan species experienced a high mutation rate. The mating cycle coincides with the shift in the sun’s activity. Lower-frequency radiation is less harmful to fetal development. Almost all species native to our planet experience it in some respect.”

Leonard nods. “Do you have time to wait until we get back to the Enterprise?”

“Even if the Enterprise locates us immediately, there is no outlet for me aboard. Assuming emergency transport to New Vulcan can be achieved in three-point-eight days, I believe I will survive.”

Len nods. “I have thiozoridum and Aa’sen’tha derivatives. I know it’s not a solution, but they should temporarily lower your hormone levels, if you are amenable.”

Sarek nods. “That would be acceptable, Doctor.”  
After giving the Ambassador the hypospray, Leonard returns to the console, where he has had the outpost sending out distress signals every hour. He increases this frequency to continuous and changes the message to include the information that one of their party is in need of immediate medical assistance.

Then there’s nothing to do but wait again. He realizes that the other Vulcans, T’Opa and Saiban, must already have been aware of Sarek’s condition, for they have ceded the use of the single bunk room entirely to him, although no other beds are available. He orders Wilkes to turn over his bedding to them – they are Elders, after all – and they make a miserable third night of it, sleeping on the floor. In fact, it’s so bad that he wakes up half-way through; and for lack of anything better to do shrugs on his parka and boots and heads outside again.

It’s the first time he’s bothered to observe the night sky on Delta Vega. That purple-visible radiation is still present, as is the hole in the night sky that represents the loss of Vulcan. Delta Vega’s atmosphere softens the glow and spreads it out, so that it’s like a thick blanket over them. When it gets so cold that the air feels like it’s turning to shards of ice inside his lungs, Len hurries back inside.

When he slams the heavy Outpost doors shut, he seems the Ambassador’s tall shape waiting.

“Dr. McCoy,” Sarek says, sharply. “I must request that you do not leave the outpost. It is unsafe, given the native fauna of this region.”

Sarek is agitated, but the last hypo was only eight hours ago, and Aa’sen’tha is strong stuff. If it isn’t working, then there isn’t anything else to be done besides keeping the patient calm. 

 

The next morning Sarek chooses to meditate in the main room, instead of in his bunk. Len guesses even that’s not working as well as before, because his breathing’s not as deep as it was before, and his eyes stay mostly open. In fact, he’s tracking Len’s movement around the room, in a way that’s vaguely unsettling. Finally T’Opa and Saiban take him to the other room, in what Len guesses might be some kind of Vulcan emergency strategy meeting. He and Wilkes fool around with the outpost’s sensory data a little bit.

“I think I’ve figured out why the Enterprise isn’t here yet,” Wilkes says.

“What?”

“Look at this.” He points to a mass of numbers that to Len’s doctor eyes look like a jumble, really. “The Sun and the black hole – it’s a micro-black-hole, really – their gravitational fields are overlapping pretty strongly. At first it looks like no problem, something for the ship’s computers to handle, but look here,” he presses a button, and a diagram of the fields appears. With another button, a tiny shuttle appears, riding the space in between them, but then – the fields begin to waver.”

“It’s like a paperclip on the surface of water,” Wilkes says. “Even our tiny shuttle interrupted the balance between these two larger forces. We didn’t predict the behavior accurately because the black hole’s not a natural one, it doesn’t behave the way our equations represent. My guess is that the Enterprise can’t get through that, its mass is thousand times that of our shuttle.”

“And transporters are out, damn.”

Wilkes nods. “I mean, it’s tricky. My guess is they’re receiving our hails, they probably know exactly where we are. If Chief Engineer Scott can find a way to send out a vessel – it needs to deflect some radiation, and absorb others.”

Len massages the bridge of his nose. “How long until they find a way to get us out? Best guess,” he adds, deflecting Wilke’s expression of uncertainty.  
The lieutenant sighs. “Commander Scott is – unconventional, Sir. He’s a genius, I just don’t know how he might go about sorting something like this out. But,” he goes on, looking slightly more confident. “Retrofitting a shuttle’s shield array – I guess he’ll have to do that – that can take a week, usually, if we have the right equipment. But I’m not sure,” – he looks at Len, and bites his lip. 

McCoy claps him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, kid. We’ve got the best crew in the world up there, and Scotty knows this place like the back of his hand. Just sit tight.”

He should probably go and tell the Vulcans the news, though. Call it a week – they’ve been here three full days, it might be as much as three more. He wonders if Sarek has the time.  
T’Opa and Saiban look even more dour than usual. They are seated in a triangle, three together, each lightly touching Sarek’s outstretched hands. When McCoy enters, Sarek growls, and T’Opa speaks sharply. “Restrain yourself!” She looks to the Doctor. “Has the Enterprise contacted us?”

“No, ma’am, I’m sorry.” And he really genuinely is. He explains Wilkes’ findings as succinctly as he can. T’Opa and Saiban share a glance. 

“I will confer with the lieutenant,” Saiban says, which Len assumes translates as, ‘I don’t trust any work a human does until a Vulcan confirms it’, and leaves the room.

Len can’t help but look at Sarek, he seems to be in pain, of some kind, his whole body looks knotted through with tension. He glances up and Leonard and then quickly shuts his eyes again. T’Opa observes this interaction between them and says. “Excuse me, Doctor, perhaps we should allow Ambassador Sarek his peace.”

In the main room, they watch as Saiban and Wilkes sit together. “It is an impressive simulation,” Saiban states. “Which takes advantage of the impressive array of sensors, many non-conventional, installed on this outpost. I commend your lieutenant for his work.” 

“Sarek,” McCoy says, in a low voice. “Does he have another three days?”

The two Vulcans share a look between them. They lead McCoy into the small space of the third working room. “I understand that you have previous experience with this aspect of Vulcan physiology,” T’Opa says, tightly.

“A little,” McCoy says. “Well, it happened to our First Office, but he mostly – handled it with the help of his mate. I wasn’t brought into it.”

“As it should be,” T’Opa nods. She and Saiban share another inscrutable expression. Len frowns.

“Ambassador Sarek does not have three days, Doctor. I estimate the blood fever may take him in another 24 hours.” She frowns. “It is impossible to be more precise.”

“Anything you can do for him?”

Again, that look. “I am unsure. Your medication cannot postpone it. He requires a female.” Her cheeks are green, McCoy realizes, from the tips of her ears to the point where her neck disappears into deep, cowled robes. Although her voice is perfectly uninflected, the ancient woman is deeply embarrassed. “Saiban and I have been bonded for many years, furthermore, I am no longer fertile. Both these factors make me an unappealing candidate to Sarek. We are considering the option of breaking our bond, so that I may attempt to ease him. However, this option affords only a 12.5% chance of success. Dr. McCoy, another option has presented itself. “

“What’s that?” He nearly growls it out, damn these Vulcans who insist on running percentages while one of their number is dying.”

“We note that Sarek is responding to you in an unexpected manner. He regards you as a potential mate, rather than a challenger. I am uncertain whether this is the result of his previous mating with a human. He himself suggests that it may be related to your scent, which he describes as “fecund””

There was so much wrong in that statement that he needed a moment to compose himself. “What?” said Leonard. “Excuse me?”  
“That is all. We believe an experiment is in order, to see whether you might slack his hunger.” T’Opa looked at him gravely. “As a human, we realize this suggestion may be unexpected.”

Len just stared at her. “Well, yeah.” He thought for a moment. “Do you, uh, Vulcans do this?”

“Vulcans are forced to accept the illogic of the pon farr,” Saiban finally said. “Although it is a less than desirable scenario, the preservation of life is paramount to our culture. Among Vulcan females, it is considered an honorable sacrifice.”

“Well, gee,” said McCoy, sarcastically. He sat down, heavily, against some unknown bit of equipment, and tried to think. “This is really the very best you’ve come up with?”

“Yes. We apologize, Dr. McCoy.”

The ‘doctor’ was subtly emphasized. McCoy looked hard at T’Opa, to let her know that he’d caught her attempt at manipulation. Of course, doctors and Vulcans both believe in preserving life. As if humans didn’t. 

“All right,” he said. “I’ll give it a try. When?”

“As soon as possible. The earlier the joining, the less violent the mating is likely to be – Doctor, once the fever is slaked, Saiban and I will assist in breaking any bond formed between you.”

“Thanks,” McCoy said, flatly. 

 

 

When the doctor enters, Sarek is still maintaining a degree of control over himself and his body: imperfect, but sufficient- even extraordinary, under the circumstances. The pon farr has come on too rapidly, the fever is ascending rapidly as well. Perhaps, were everything as it once was, and Vulcan still in the sky, this year would be a Hyuth-Ral, one in which many young males began their fevers, when the hot sun cooled and subtle gravitational forces pulled water from the center of the planet, filling previously dry oases and lowland lakes, making grasses grow in the desert. In ancient times, it would have been celebrated as a gift, an year of plenty between dry and difficult seasons. Amanda would have laughed in her warm way, and drawn him against her breast.

But on cold Delta Vega, against the backdrop of a deadened sky, it is a cruel farce. Sarek is prepared to die here, but death, it seems, is unnecessary and therefore illogical. 

The doctor has entered and shut the door, engaging the locking mechanism with his palm. He looks over his shoulder at Sarek, warily. Sarek is past the point of concern about his appearance, which must be irregular. The doctor’s scent is heady. Sarek hears himself moan.

“Doctor.” He manages. “I apologize for the circumstances.”

“Ain’t your fault.” The doctor cuts him off. “What do I gotta do, here?”

Sarek gazes up at him. “You have never attempted intercourse with another man?”

McCoy snorts. “Never had the inclination.”

Sarek shakes his head. He has been with only two women in his life, Amanda and before her T’Rea. With Amanda, he enjoyed procreation, but he does not expect this knowledge to aid in the comfort of McCoy.

“Well fuck,” says the doctor. He takes a hypospray from his pocket and presses it against his own neck. The imagery is violent and Sarek half rises, wanting to wrest the device away from him. But it discharges harmlessly. 

“A tranquilizer,” the doctor explains. “T’Opa suggested it.”

Sarek snarls, he does not like the idea. He watches as McCoy’s eyes dilate. The doctor walks, carefully, over to the bunk across from Sarek and sits.

“A bit strong, that thing,” he drawls out.

“Doctor,” Sarek says. “I will bond with you now. It will be better to do this, before my control is entirely gone.” Far better. A mental bond created in the midst of pon farr, with a psi-null species, might destroy the mind entirely. Sarek is still enough himself, at least, to prevent this.

He reaches his hand out to the side of the doctor’s face, McCoy flinches away from the movement and then steels himself against it. Sarek fits his fingers against the proper points: fascinating that humans, while psi-null, nevertheless have evolved the same natural places of contact as Vulcans and many other species. In a clearer moment Sarek would speculate that this was a signal of some latent telepathic potential, now, it seems more like fated design, as though McCoy is a conduit waiting to be filled.

He enters McCoy’s mind carefully, or as carefully as he can. The doctor feels and resents the intrusion. His mind agitated, unsure of the correctness of his own actions, disordered, disorienting, like a preyed-upon creature, looking for a direction towards escape. Sarek tries, crudely, to offer comfort, by pushing an image of safely and security towards McCoy’s mind, unexpectedly, it is latched onto strongly. McCoy, he realizes, is receptive to telepathic contact in a way that most humans are not: that is to say, his mind is apparently quite open to suggestion.

“What did you do?” The question reverberates in McCoy’s mind.

“My apologies, Doctor. Your mind is unlike that of my late wife, I was somewhat unprepared…”

Delicately, he forms in his mind and in those of McCoy the connections of a mating bond, reaching them up and braiding them together until they begin to merge together. There exist connections that form instinctively, easily, when two compatible minds brush together; this is not one. Only Sarek’s pon farr, in fact, is driving it, his inexplicable desire for the doctor which must be a byproduct of his time mated to Amanda. The doctor seems no better pleased with the bond than he is; he grits his teeth against it and stays complacent in Sarek’s hands only by willpower. Once formed, Sarek quickly buries the bond, making it as imperceptible to the Doctor’s mind as is possible- the Doctor’s mind is mature, no longer malleable enough to response favorably to the sensation of another’s presence.

“I can cause you to be comfortable,” he tells McCoy, and pushes towards him the information explaining what this might means. He listens to McCoy consider, and then make a judgment.

“Do it.”

Sarek feels relief: this will make the mating less difficult for both of them. He isolates a small portion of his own nearly overwhelming lust, and projects it towards the doctor. With it, the doctor gasps and arches his back, his eyes, already blown from medication, grow dark and wet. This is now his mate: his body calls back to Sarek’s own, and, finding it simpler, Sarek releases his own control and moves to join with him. 

 

 

The fever lasts for 21 hours. It is only at the end that Len comes back to himself – or rather, he is forced to grapple with the notion- Sarek comes back to himself, and thus Len’s mind, brought along for the ride, returns too. He is naked, sore, sticky, and unbelievably, desperately thirsty. He crawls to the sonic shower while Sarek is still dozing, and ends up sitting, not standing, in it, out of fear that his legs will go out on him. He is profoundly grateful for whatever Vulcan wizardry Sarek used to make the event seem rather distant, almost dream-like, in his mind.

When the shower begins to splutter, protesting its overuse, he crawls out again, finds the pieces of his uniform on the floor and begins to work on getting into them. He senses, rather than hears or sees, Sarek awakening, when he looks over his shoulder the Ambassador is observing him from his bunk. Sweet baby Jesus, McCoy thinks. I’ve slept with Spock’s father. The thought is enough to make him amused, for just a second, before he starts to think about how many people are going to have to be on the need-to-know list about this and whether Jim and Spock are inevitably among them.  
“Shower’s all yours,” he says to Sarek, who nods, and rises. He doesn’t seem concerned by his nakedness, although it bothers Len.

When Sarek comes out again, Len’s already pulling on his boots. “How long until you can break the bond?” he asks.

Sarek looks down at him – he’s still naked, and that makes Len regret not having waited to ask questions until after he was back in his Ambassador robes, or whatever. 

“Within 96 hours, I believe the pon farr will be sufficiently abated to make the procedure safe.” He keeps staring, though, and Len gets a hint of – concern? confusion? – through the bond. “I must thank you, Leonard, for saving my life.”

“No problem,” Len mumbles. 

He starts to hope the 96 hours will be up before the Enterprise comes to get them. Before, he was hoping for a speedy rescue, and now, he’s hoping for as late a one as possible. When he and Sarek come out of their room – it seems Wilkes was so concerned about their disappearance that the Vulcan elders had to tell him what was going on, which is both horrifying and mildly hilarious – he learns that Scotty’s found a way to send them low-wave subspace messages and has promised rescue as soon as a few technical details are in place.

“Are you sure you can’t remove it earlier?” he hisses to Sarek. “With T’Opa’s help?” He’s thinking that he can swear Wilkes to silence and then get it stricken from the record entirely. The Vulcans, despite usually being obsessively anal about mission reports and so forth, are signaling that they might actually be ok with this idea. Len suspects it might even be SOP in cases of pon farr.

Sarek replies in the negative, through the bond, which gives Len goose bumps. However, since Len can’t tell him to stop doing that without admitting there is a bond, he decides to stay quiet.

The next morning, the Enterprise sends another message to promise they’ll be there tomorrow. Sarek’s count-down is still 80 hours away. 

However, Sarek begins to come around to Len’s point of view. 

“The pon farr appears to be abating rapidly,” he explains. “With the assistance of T’Opa and Saiban, we may break the bond earlier than I previously anticipated.”

Len’s all for that: it would be nice to be already-divorced by the time they get back to the ship and have to face Jim and Spock. He waits around all day jumpily, not sleeping well, anxious because of that little buzz in the back of his head.

However, circumstances continue to conspire against him. 

In the morning, as he and Wilkes are eating some remarkably bad replicator scrambled eggs, Sarek looks at him and says, “your smell is unusual.”

Len frowns. “So what?” he says. “I think the sonic shower is malfunctioning.”

“It is,” pipes in Wilkes. “The frequencies are too low. I tried to fix it yesterday, it looks crazy inside. I think Chief Engineer Scott was salvaging it for parts.”

McCoy shrugs.

“That is not what I meant,” Sarek says. “Doctor, I desire to speak with you in private.”

Wilkes stifles a smirk. Len is starting to suspect that the Vulcan elders, in the embarrassment over explaining pon farr, might have white-washed things when explaining things to him a little bit, because Wilkes seems to think he and Sarek are having some sort of a tryst. He swears, but gets up, and follows Sarek back into the bunk area.

“Forgive me for asking a personal question” Sarek says. “However. Doctor: are you, as the humans call it, a carrier?”

Len opens his mouth. “What? Why? Oh.” He frowns. “You can smell it on me?”

Sarek does not speak for a moment, and who knows what is going on behind that tableaux-face of his now that he’s regaining his control.

“Your smell is altered.” He says, finally, “in a manner consistent with human fertility. I believe I may have inseminated you.”

Len looks at him, opens his mouth, and then closes it again. 

“Well, shit,” he says, finally. Then he looks around the empty, tiny gray room in which they are standing, as if to make sure there’s no one else there.

 

“Listen, I’ll get it checked out once we get back to the Enterprise, ok? Until then, let’s just – keep it quiet for now.”

“I concur.” Sarek pauses again – Leonard is starting to hate the sound of those pauses.

“It is unadvisable to break a mating bond with a gravid partner.”

He’s too thrown to argue right then. “Fine.” He says. “Fuck. Whatever. We’ll talk about it later.”

 

 

Jim’s first indication that something is wrong is a sharp burst of something- panic? – through the bond, before Spock abruptly clamps down. 

“Helm,” Jim says. “Status of the Excaliber?”

“Keptin, Shuttle One has reached the moon’s surface, and is broadcasting clearly.” Chekov reports. “No difficulties. It appears that Excaliber has successfully rendezvoused with the stranded party. Return flight to the Enterprise will require approximately 43.5 minutes. There are no serious injuries.”

“Great,” Jim says, and then sits back in his Captain’s chair to try to tease out the impressions coming through the bond from Spock – the panic subsides quickly, replaced mostly by tension, anxiety. Spock is not injured, or afraid, but still he thrums, like a steel thread pulled tight, a string on that Vulcan harp he pulls out from time to time. 

The signals received by the Enterprise from the stranded party mentioned a medical emergency, although Bones was unusually vague on that point - the message hardly said anything more. Jim’s mind flickers between ideas: a medical emergency but not an injury, Spock’s obvious distress, the clannish, almost medieval secretiveness of Vulcans.

With two minutes left before the shuttle docks, he makes his way to the bay. He times it almost perfectly, to run into the group as arrive. Bones is red faced, Sarek implacable as always, the entire party a little scruffy but not otherwise the worse for wear. Spock looks at him, and does not speak, his discomfort is like a palpable wound, and Jim longs to touch and comfort him. Instead, he reaches out, as best he is able – he is still not good at consciously controlling their bond - a feeling of comfort. Spock receives the emotion gratefully, sends back a signal of reassurance: he is not harmed, he has only been taken aback.

“Everyone ok?” Jim asks, looking back and forth between them.

“The doctor-,” Spock begins, and then Bones quickly cuts him off. 

“We’re all fine, Jim. Just gonna head to sick bay to make sure to get the Elders checked out.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Spock looks at Sarek, Sarek looks at Bones, and Bones stares at a point on the wall just over Jim’s shoulder. But then again, no one argues, so Jim takes it as a win. 

Dr. M’Benga is waiting for them in sickbay. “Dr. McCoy,” he says, warmly. He nods to the Vulcan contingent. “It’s very good to see you all back again safely.”

Bones smiles at him, wanly. M’Benga ushers T’Opa and Saiban in an examining room, and Bones seems to relax a thread. He turns, looks at Jim and Spock, sighs, and says, “let’s go to my office.”

He locks the office door with his CMO code, goes to his desk and pulls out his personal tricorder – an antique once used by his father, Jim knows. He scans himself from hip to neck, and waits while it processes. 

“What’s going on?” 

Bones gives him a dark look. “Just give me a second.” 

The device beeps. Len looks at it, bites his inner lip, and sits down, heavily, behind his desk. 

“You were right,” he says to Sarek. 

“Doctor-”

Bones rubs his forehead. “Just let me think about this for a minute.” 

“Is something wrong with you?”

Bones looks up at him. He looks shell-shocked, but also faintly amused by Jim’s question. “You might say that,” he drawls. After a moment he slides the tricorder across his desk to Jim.  
Jim scans the readout: Human male, genetic carrier. Zygote, approximately 3 days old, with unusually elevated concentrations of organometallic copper. Even then, it takes him a minute to put the pieces together.

“You’re pregnant??!” 

“Damnit, Jim.” Bones’ scowl grows deeper. 

“You slept with-“ Jim doesn’t finish the question: he’s a smart boy, he doesn’t need to have the obvious repeated to him. “What happened?”

Bones looks warily at Sarek, and then at Spock and then says. “That thing that happened to you a couple of months ago.”

“Pon farr.” Spock’s voice is monotone.

“Our options were limited.” Sarek replies. 

Jim tries to remember what he knows about human-Vulcan crossbreeds (i.e., Spock). Human-Vulcan fertilization can occur spontaneously. But the chances of a genetic combination that is both viable and able to survive for more than a few weeks in the environment of its mother’s womb are statistically negligible. Which is why, prior to Spock’s conception, geneticists at the VSA developed the therapeutic techniques to stabilize a Vulcan-human hybrid pregnancy.

“What are you going to do?” He asks Bones.

Bones looks both angry and helpless. 

“Both Vulcan philosophy, and the current needs of the Vulcan people, favor the protection of life,” Sarek says, stiffly. McCoy glares at him harder, and it suddenly hits Jim, really hits him, that Bones is pregnant by Sarek. No wonder Spock was freaking out. Jim’s eyes dart back and forth between them. 

“Look, I’m a doctor,” Bones says. “I never –I’m not.” He stops. “I don’t know.”

Sarek and Spock are both doing that Vulcan thing where, despite staying absolutely still, they seem to be vibrating with the need to logically convince Bones what his next step should be. And if either of them opens their mouths just now, Jim is pretty sure, Bones is gonna flip out entirely. He turns to them, puts his hands up. 

“Guys, maybe you should give him some space,” he says. “Just wait outside for a while, ok?”

He looks pleadingly at Spock, who purses his lips, but nods. They retreat. As soon as the door slides shut again, he turns to look at Bones, who avoids his gaze.

“I didn’t know you were a carrier,” it’s the next thing that comes into his head.

McCoy shrugs. “Never thought much about it myself,” he admits, “until now.” His eyes roam over the row of antique medical instruments that he keeps displayed on the shelf, still not looking at Jim. “I didn’t even find out about it until after I was in med school.”

This is like the times when Bones has talked about his father- although, on that occasion, they were both blind drunk. But the tone of his voice, the refusal to look make eye contact, is the same. Bones is ashamed.

“You saved his life,” Jim says, bluntly.

Bones grunts. 

“Believe me, I know. I’ve been through it. You did the right thing.”

The normal ritual would be for them to dig into Bone’s stash of bourbon, or Jim’s Romulan ale, before ever attempting such a conversation. But under the circumstances even that seems to be off the table. Jim sighs, and sits down across from him. 

“I can’t in good conscience…,” Bones rubs his brow. “I’ve tried to preserve life. And the one time I didn’t,” he doesn’t say more than that, he doesn’t need to. Jim thinks Bones did the right thing back then, too, when he helped his father to pass on, but he knows that decision stays with him every minute. “I just can’t live with that again.” He looks up from his hands at Jim. 

Jim waits. “Ok then.” 

After a moment, Bones nods. “Ok.”

Jim gets up, planning to tell Spock to take Sarek to the mess or something for a while, when another horrifying thought hits him. 

“Does this mean you’re like my step-mother-in-law, now?”

Judging by the look Bones gives him in response to that, it probably would have been better if Jim hadn’t said it out loud.

 

 

“Dr. McCoy is on the observation deck,” his son’s mate informs him, several hours later. “He wishes to meet you there at 20:00 hours.”

Sarek arrives promptly. He doubts whether the doctor – his mate, technically, although some part of himself rebels against the term (He has been bonded thrice, but only Amanda was his mate) - is sitting in one of the lounge chairs reading. Unusually, he has turned the chair 180 degrees, so that his back is to the large windows from which one can view space. 

His mind is difficult for Sarek to interpret: McCoy’s mind is like a maelstrom of shifting colors and noises, slightly disorienting. However, Sarek skims it’s surface, and finds anger, resolve, as well as, more pressingly, fatigue. McCoy has not been sleeping well. 

“Sarek,” the doctor says, then clears his throat and waves at the chair across from him. Sarek seats himself.

“Wasn’t really sure where to talk,” Dr. McCoy says. “I usually don’t come up here, but it’s quiet enough.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

Dr. McCoy smiles wryly. “Hell.” He says. “Never thought I’d be having a talk like this.”

“Nor did I.”

Dr. McCoy pauses, then calls up a photo on his padd.

“This is my Joanna,” he tells Sarek, passing it over. “She’s thirteen, now. Had her when we were only twenty-four…”he smiles crookedly. “Looking back on it, I can’t think why we were in such a hurry.”

“Indeed,” Sarek examines the picture: the young female resembles the doctor in appearance. “I was thirty years of age at the time of the conception of my first son,” He states. “This is young by Vulcan standards.”

“Your first son?”

“Sybok,” Sarek clarifies. “His mother passed away several years before my marriage to Amanda Grayson.”

The doctor looks at him carefully. “Spock never mentioned that.”

“I doubt he found it relevant.”

“And… where is he now?”

“I do not know, Doctor. We had fallen out of contact several years before the destruction of Vulcan. I am unaware whether he was on planet, at the time.” 

“I’m sorry,” McCoy says, quietly.

“Apologies are illogical, Doctor.”

The doctor hums softly, looking back at the picture of his own daughter, which he had now taken back. “I think I can feel you a little bit, through this bond-thingy,” he says. Sarek understand his underlying meaning. 

“It is true that I experience some – regret,” he admits. “Vulcans are not without emotion, Doctor. Logic dictates that it be put aside, not suppressed.”

“That’s a distinction I’m not sure I understand,” McCoy says. Then he stands, stretching. “I regret not getting to see more of Joanna growing up. And I guess I’d regret it to, if I didn’t give this one a chance too.” He frowns. “Maybe you can contact that geneticist of yours at the VSA, then.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” Sarek wonders if McCoy can feel his relief, through the bond.  
McCoy smiles slightly, although his mind feels bitter. “Thanking me is illogical, Ambassador.”

 

 

The return trip to New Vulcan is mercifully quick; the news of the astrospacial abnormalities surrounding the Vulcan black hole having temporarily put a halt to Federation-Vulcan negotiations for the moment, the Enterprise is able to chart a straight course. 

The new planet is just as hot and dry as the old one, although the sky is closer to Earth-blue because the sun is newer. When they beam down, it’s the middle of the afternoon, and Len is feeling a little tired, mostly from lack of sleep. The transporter always leaves him momentarily dizzy, but he only sways the tiniest amount before a firm hand – Spock’s – grabs his arm.

He looks at the man in annoyance. “I’m fine, Spock.”

Spock peaks an eyebrow, but obediently withdraws his hand. 

“If you say so, Doctor.”

Damn. Now the damn hobgoblin’s condescending to him.

“If you prefer, I may accompany you to your appointment.”

“No, Spock,” Len grits his teeth. “Thank you.”

The geneticist, T’Pula, is young – the protégé of the healer who designed the original procedures of the genetic therapy. She is also heavily pregnant herself – as were nearly all the female Vulcans McCoy saw as he passed through New ShiKahr on route to the VSA, as a matter of fact. For an instant he imagines himself part of some Vulcan breeding agenda, and grimaces, pushing the thought aside.

“The genetic modifications are not extreme, Doctor,” she says, after a barrage of questions and tests. “I predict an 87.7% probability that the procedure will be successful. 

There it is, then.

“How soon can you do it?”

“I will require several hours to prepare. We can schedule the procedure for tomorrow morning, if you are amendable.”

“Fine,” he says, though it really isn’t. This is real, he tells himself. This is coming. 

 

Sarek elects to attend the procedures, although McCoy has assured him it is not necessary. However, as the process will determine many facets of the future biology of his offspring, Sarek finds it informative.

Dr. McCoy , in contrast, - and despite his superior professional understanding of the process – seems to regard the therapy sessions as tedious, possibly because he is forced to remain supine for several hours at a time as the technicians works. He chooses not to engage in conversation with Sarek or the geneticist throughout this process, and Sarek can feel anger swirling within him irrationally. The instinctive desire to reach out through the bond and soothe his mate’s mind is present, but he knows such an attempt would only exacerbate McCoy’s distress. It was thus in his bonding with T’Rea. It had proceeded by Vulcan custom, but the link between them was never strong. Before his bonding with Amanda, he had not fully understood the extent of the emptiness in that early union. His bonding with Leonard McCoy is weak; therefore, he lacks the ability to understand, or soften, his mate’s distress. 

He mentally debates for a moment before sending along the bond a calming impulse to sleep. Such interference without permission is unethical, however, the welfare of the fetus is also at issue; McCoy, though extremely tired, is too agitated to find rest without assistance.  
When McCoy yawns, widely, Sarek slips from the room.

Spock is waiting for him in the hallway: this is unexpected. Sarek sends out a brief probe, but Spock’s shields are raised, as closed to him as they have always been since reaching his majority. For a moment, his expression seems reminiscent of that of Sybok; they were always very physically similar. 

“Dr. McCoy?” 

“Agitated,” Sarek pauses, “perhaps if you or Captain Kirk might speak to him?”

Spock bows his head. “Under the circumstances, I believe the Captain would be the preferable choice. His shift will end in one-point-two-five-hours, I will suggest that he seek out Dr. McCoy then.”

Sarek nods in acquiescence. He waits; Spock remains next to him but does not speak. There are many topics between them thus, topics of which each might prefer it was not necessary to speak. Finally Spock continues abruptly.

“The fetus?”

“Viable. Female,” Sarek adds, although the information is not strictly pertinent. “There remains the possibility of spontaneous abortion until the end of the first trimester.”

Spock does not comment on this. Looking at his son, Sarek remembers the occasion upon which the healer first informed him and Amanda that Spock would be sterile. It had been processed alongside the information that he was not beset with any severe genetic abnormalities, yet Amanda was extremely disappointed. Sarek had thought it illogical then; in the present day, he understood that she had seen farther than he had. His son has formed a male-male bond, and Captain Kirk does not strike Sarek as particularly interested in fatherhood. Yet Spock would have made an excellent parent, far better than Sarek himself. This new one, growing, should perhaps have been for him. 

He does not know if Sybok sired any children, and feels a wash of pain pass through him at the thought. He is unsure whether it is his own or reflected from the bond; regardless, it represents further evidence his control has been severely tested by the day’s events. 

“Excuse me,” he says to his son. “I require meditation.”

Spock bows his head in acquiescence, Sarek turns toward his quarters. He can feel his son’s dark eyes tracking him, as he moves away.

 

Len avoids Sarek until the next afternoon, when they have arranges to meet with Geoff to talk again about the situation. He is feeling calmer since finishing the genetic therapy, although the itch of the bond with Sarek is a constant irritant. Like a mild rash, he can ignore it when his mind is on other things, but as soon as he has nothing to do he can feel it there, prickling him. 

When Sarek arrives, in cool gray robes, he looks ministerial, lending their consultation a calm, professional aura that Leonard finds soothing.

Geoff is a good doctor, too – although he’s Len’s friend, he avoids sympathy and instead cuts right to the point. He hands Leo the padd with all the data that’s so far been collected, including a scan of the embryo – thus far, no more than a small collection of cells. If it weren’t his own case, Len would probably be fascinated. There’s evidence that she’s going to be green-blooded, like Spock – the concentration of copper is so high as to be toxic to a human fetus – and the placenta is growing much more rapidly than is usual. Other than that, it’s a normal Augment pregnancy.

“If I ever figure out which ancestor of mine was a goddamn superman,” Leo grumbles, handing the padd back to M’Benga, “I’ll go back in time myself and castrate’em myself.”

Geoff’s lips twist into a brief smile, Sarek looks concerned, probably by the violence of his imagery. Len sighs. “What do you suggest?”

Geoff nods. “We’re stationed at New Vulcan for another three days. Then the Enterprise is set to return to Earth in another four months. So you have two options: stay here, or, if you prefer, wait, and if the first trimester goes smoothly, we’ll arrange for your transfer to Earth after that time.”

Len frowns, and looks at Sarek. He does not hesitate, exactly, - and he looks exactly as he always does –but Len still gets the sense that he is speaking carefully, diplomatically. 

“Remaining on New Vulcan would result in superior access to medical care, Doctor.”

Len frowns at him. “It might mean better physical care, Ambassador, but I’m pretty sure my mental health would suffer.” He shakes his head. “I’m going to Earth. You can stay here. We can coordinate once I’m” his scowl widens, “farther along.”

“He can’t, Leonard.”

“What?” Leonard looks at Geoff in surprise.

“Len, Vulcan pregnancies aren’t really your area, so you wouldn’t know this, but, the telepathic bond that forms between mother and child is essential to the fetus’s proper neuronal development. Since you’re psi-null, Sarek will have to bond with the fetus instead. In fact it’ll be beneficial for him to begin as soon as possible. It requires a special technique but luckily, he’s learnt it before.”

“I am willing to remain about the Enterprise, Doctor, if this is what you desire.” Sarek states.

Leonard looks at him and suppresses a sigh. It’s hardly fair to take Sarek away from his work for the entire pregnancy: on the other hand, he’s going to have to do the same thing anyway, and staying on New Vulcan is definitely out.

“Thank you,” he says to Sarek, who inclines his head in response. Geoff looks between them, relieved.

“Good,” he says. “Other than that, see me for check-ups daily – does around this time work for you? Prenatal vitamins,” he frowns. “I’m inclined to say, let’s put you on whatever Amanda Grayson was taking, or nothing at all. What’s toxic to a human fetus may be necessary to the Vulcan one, and vice-versa. I’m hoping your body will tell you what you need with cravings and so forth.”

They work out all the additional kinks, Geoff tactfully avoids offering congratulations, and McCoy shows himself out – actually he just opens M’Benga’s door, turns the corner, and goes into the Chief Medical Officer’s office. Sarek follows him, closing the door softly behind.

“That psychic thing?” Len asks. It isn’t bad to get it out of the way as soon as possible. Sarek nods. “How long will this take?”

“Approximately one-point-five standard hour daily.” Sarek pauses. “Once I have better assessed the situation, I will be able to inform you more precisely.”

“Naw, that’s fine. What do we do?”

Sarek looks around the office, seemingly unimpressed. “My quarters are a more adequate location for the meditation.”

Len has to think about that. He hasn’t been in Ambassador Sarek’s quarters, and he would prefer to keep it that way. Given that they’re just standard guest quarters, they probably aren’t decked out with Vulcan thingamabobs like Spock-and-Jim’s place is, nevertheless, he prefers someplace more neutral. His office – no, he decides. 

“Let’s find a rec room,” he says. “They usually have exercise mats, stuff like that.”

Sarek quirks an eyebrow at him, and Len gets a quick sense of something buzzing in the back of his brain, which is quickly shut off.  
“That would be acceptable.”

They head to the rec rooms, find one of the private small workout rooms open, and Leonard digs out some workout mats and drags them over. Sarek watches like a hawk, but does not offer assistance. He’s not sure, Leonard thinks, what he might do that will set Leo off, and somehow that thought pisses him off too.

Once they engage the privacy lock Sarek lowers himself to the floor gracefully; Leo quickly follows him, so that they sit face-to-face.

“How do we do this?”

“It will be more comfortable if you face away from me.”

He doesn’t like that, but he does it anyway, turning around. He hears Sarek moving, and feels his heat when he comes up close behind him.

“Remove your shirt."

He frowns but pulls it off, smoothly, over his head. “Undershirt too?”

“No,” Sarek responds. “This is adequate. I will put myself into a light trance, and then I will touch you.”

McCoy nods, and waits. Having his back to Sarek leaves him uncomfortably exposed, he feels tense. Behind him, Sarek is very silent, his breaths growing long and slow. It seems to take a long time, and there is nothing to look at but the gray wall of the room in front of them. 

The itch in his mind that is the bond seems to expand, gradually. It’s like a bee’s buzzing, and it grows louder and louder. With it, his awareness of Sarek’s presence becomes less a sense of the physical presence behind him, and more a sense of the mental presence, around him and within him. When Sarek’s hands fall lightly on his sides, the contact is less startling than it would have been initially.

Sarek’s graceful hands reach around, and lift the hem of Len’s wife-beater. McCoy looks down at them in wonder. They are old hands, more like those of a grandfather than a father, and Sarek is sitting very close behind him, so near that he can feel his breath against his back. It’s the Vulcan version of Lamaze, McCoy decides, and is surprised when a sense of amusement/agreement filters back across the bond. 

He tries to hold his breathing slow, in time with Sarek’s, if only to hide his discomfort as Sarek lightly strokes his stomach, dipping lower, below the waist of Len’s trousers, before apparently hitting upon the place that allows him best access to the fetus. He doesn’t get much sense of anything happening, really, just a sense of being asea somehow, bobbing gently on the waves of whatever it is that Sarek’s projecting towards his abdomen. He doesn’t really like it, and yet it’s less uncomfortable than he would have expected. After a while, he grows bored, then drowsy, and he is almost asleep when he finally feels Sarek’s hands withdrawing, pushing his undershirt back down again and pulling away. 

“Did it, uh, work?” He asks, reaching around to look at Sarek.

Sarek meets his eyes. “It is impossible to say, at this point the fetus is incapable of response.”

Given that it’s smaller than a golf ball, with totally undifferentiated organs, Len should have considered this earlier. 

“Couldn’t you wait, then, and start this a little bit later?”

“No. The fetus must develop in an atmosphere of regular telepathic stimulation.”

“Fine, whatever.” He stands, stretching his shoulders, and reaches down to take his shirt off the floor and pull it back over his head. Sarek rises, again, more fluidly than Len would expect from a human man of the same age.

 

 

The Enterprise breaks orbit from New Vulcan, and heads toward Andor, where Starfleet wants Kirk to negotiate with one of the larger ice syndicates. It’s the kind of mission Len prefers, as it deals in known quantities, with lower odds of sudden emergencies and crew members needing to be stitched back together.

Sarek meets him at the end of alpha shift every afternoon, they go to one of the rec rooms, Sarek performs the same light massage, and usually, Len ends up drifting off to sleep somewhere in the middle. It’s strange, because he’s usually not the sort to fall asleep in front of strangers – but perhaps not surprising given that he finds himself tired more often than he used to be. He tries to hide it from M’Benga and Chapel, who watch him like hawks while he’s in sickbay, and from Spock and Kirk, who keep an eye on him when he’s out of it. 

He has no idea what Sarek does with the rest of his time. Uhura mentions a steady stream of communications into and out of his guest quarters. Sometimes Len can feel him working, in the back of his mind – it’s like a low static, the hum of a radio that’s half-tuned to another language. Once or twice he’s felt a little guilty, as if he’s the one who has forced Sarek to uproot his life. But he reminds himself that it’s not for him, but the baby, and it’s both of them who are choosing to turn everything upside-down for the kid. He wouldn’t try to talk Sarek out of it –they’re both fathers already, they already know.

It isn’t any of his business either, but it’s also interesting to see the way Spock and Sarek continue to dance around each other. Sometimes through the bond with Sarek he gets glimpses of emotion he’s sure the man would deny, pride and regret, when he is thinking about his son. He’s not sure exactly what the history is between them: did Sarek tell Spock not to join Starfleet? Did he tell him not to bond with Jim? When they are together Spock’s control becomes intense, the mannerisms that merely seems deadpan when he’s with Jim ratcheted up until he’s almost painful to watch. 

Two weeks after Sarek comes aboard the Enterprise, Spock makes a visit to sickbay in order to ask if he can do that psychic-touchy thing with the baby, too. Len’s gut response is to yell him out of the office, but instead he bites his tongue, counts to ten, and says, fine, whatever. Then he comms Jim and tells him he’d better be there too; he can’t handle the tension between both of them at once by himself. 

 

 

Jim’s a little weirded out by Bones’ Vulcan Lamaze, but when he tries to sneak off, Spock nearly drags him to the rec room by his ear. 

Bones glares, as if daring him to make one crack, and then pulls off his regulation shirt, leaving a black tank top underneath. With his usual uniform on, his belly still looks flat, but with only the undershirt, Jim can see that he’s developing just the hint of a potbelly. 

He, Spock, and Sarek form a triad around Bones. Then Sarek places his hands on Bones’s belly, pressing very lightly, and explains to Spock, blandly, what pressure-points he is looking for. Spock is concentrating intensely, and Bones, oddly enough, doesn’t say anything. Instead, after no more than ten or fifteen minutes, he seems to fall half-asleep.

“The human mind sometimes misinterprets psychic interference as an REM-like dream state,” Sarek explains. “Amanda, also, frequently found it difficult to stay alert during this time.”

Jim feels Spock’s reaction to this mention of his mother – a kind of reaching forward, grasping towards the sound of her name. But Sarek does not offer more, and Spock does not ask.

“What was she like?” Jim prompts.

“While pregnant with Spock, she was very energetic,” Sarek says. “She traveled to various markets in ShiKahr to find fixtures for his nursery. I understand this is referred to by humans as ‘nesting’. Dr. McCoy,” Sarek says. “Would you be amenable to allowing Spock to attempt to the link?”

Bones blinks and nods. It’s actually kind of cute, the way he sways slightly as Sarek and Spock change positions. Jim can see him sort of start to wake up, and become uncomfortable, as Spock feels for the right position on his stomach, and then, as Spock gets the hang of it, drift off again.  
“I believe I have established a connection,” says Spock. Sarek replies in Vulcan, and they begin a quiet conversation which Jim only half follows, both because of the language and the subject matter.

When they finally finish, Sarek rouses Bones, almost tenderly, until he’s alert enough to mutter and gripe about how he needs to get back to work. Bones pulls his shirt back on, give a quick, slightly embarrassed nod to Jim, and head back to sickbay. 

As soon as Sarek, too, is out the door, Spock tugs discreetly on Jim’s fingertips, and then keeps pulling him all the way out the door and down the corridor back to their quarters. As soon as the door slides shut the heat from his mind has them both shucking their clothing, locking together. Spock fucks him hard, intently, and Jim would be a little freaked out by how turned on he is by their pregnant friend - if he wasn’t busy enjoying the benefits of it, instead. 

The next morning, Jim wakes and stretches, first straightening his toes and the flexing his shoulders and then raising arms up over his head. Spock is still quiet beside him: Spock will wake, precisely, in 17 minutes, just as he does every morning at exactly 5:35am.

Jim slides out of bed first, heading to the bathroom, where he empties his bladder, showers, and then wipes the mirror clean of humidity so that he can to shave. For a moment, in the cool glass, his eyes aren’t his own – they are George Kirk’s – whoever that is – the father that he knows mostly as a hologram in Starfleet recruitment videos, as the absence in his mother’s eyes. 

Fuck her, anyway. Fuck them both. 

When Jim thinks about kids, what comes to mind are his own memories of childhood: being very young, mostly, and watching Winona waving goodbye on her way out the door for one mission after another. Early on, he was left with grandparents he can only vaguely remember, then later on with Frank, and finally once, disastrously, at a camp for ‘gifted’ troublemakers on Tarsus. Jim doesn’t want kids, and although he always knew that Spock, who had gone out of his way to mention his infertility when they were first dating, didn’t exactly feel the same, the discordance had never bothered him. 

But now, with Spock following Bones around the ship like a lost puppy, Jim wonders.

He finishes with the sonic razor, splashes cold water over his face, and listens as Spock, who slipped into the bathroom sometime after him, finishes his sonic shower (like a cat, he hates water), and slips out of the stall behind Jim. In an unusual display of emotion outside the bedroom, he presses his naked body up against Jim’s. Jim laughs, dries his face, and turns around. 

“That was pretty hot last night, huh?”

Spock lowers his head and kisses the side of his neck. By now Jim knows him well; it’s a feeble attempt at distraction. He slips away, heading into the bedroom to look for underwear. He loves the feeling of knowing that Spock is watching his bare ass as he walks away. 

“How come you never told me you wanted kids?” He asks, as he rummages in the fresher. 

“I do not,” Spock says.

“Oh, come off it.” He dances on one leg as he pulls his underpants and then his pants on. “If things were different?”

“Circumstances are not different,” Spock says, firmly. “And it is illogical to attempt to gauge one’s reaction to situations which are and must remain entirely hypothetical.”

“Yeah?” Jim shrugs his way into his uniform shirt. It’s just a little bit snug at the waist – he’s up a kilo or two again, he’s pretty sure, which means it’s time to double his workout routine for a while. If it were Bones, now, that snugness would mean something entirely different – he brushes the weird stray thought from his mind.

Back at the Academy Jim once hacked his own medical records – no big deal, he hacked everything in those days. That had included the genetic profile that had been done on him as part of the medical review after the Federation arrived on Tarsus. Jim’s intelligence quotient, his slight latent telepathy, as well as the particular color of his eyes, are all pretty suggestive of an Augment somewhere in the Kirk family tree. He is not, however, like Bones, a male carrier.

Spock may deny it, but Jim could sense, last night, the faint tinge of longing clinging to his skin. Spock can’t have children, Jim never wanted them, and given their respective careers, children would be impractical and undesirable. 

Nevertheless, Spock regrets. 

 

 

Two weeks later, as they sit in the mess, Bones finds himself picking without enthusiasm at the rice casserole he ordered. On the other side of table, the smell of Jim’s hamburger is making him nauseous. Rather than say so, he indulges in a little of his usual half-hearted grousing, because Jim really should eat better. Spock has some sort of salad and an entrée of mush in sauce that smells surprisingly – not bad, really.

“What is that?” He asks, waving his fork in the general direction of Spock’s tray.

“This is Klitanta k’forati-mun, Doctor, a traditional Vulcan meal eaten during the dry season.” 

“Huh.” It smells damn tasty, though, and the rice casserole on his own plate looks less and less appealing. He pushes it around with his spoon, ignoring the voice of his grandmother in his head that tells him to stop playing with his food.

Jim frowns. “Bones, are you gonna eat that?”

“Ah, maybe later.” He pushes the tray away and considers momentarily the apple on Jim’s tray, although that doesn’t look very good either.

“You gotta eat, Bones,” Jim says, warming to his subject, “because now, you know,”

“Don’t say it,” Len instructs.

“You’re eating for-”

“Don’t-,” he warns, at the same moment Spock says, firmly, “Jim!”

Jim is distracted from his teasing, “What, Spock?”

“Perhaps comments on Dr. McCoy’s diet should be left to someone whose own intake does not consist entirely of refined carbohydrates and cholesterol.”

Bones laughs. “Exactly, thank you, Spock.”

“However,” Spock quirks an eyebrow at him, “I have noticed that you had skipped three lunches and two dinners in the past seven days. And on occasions where you have partaken of nourishment, it has frequently been inadequate for optimal fetal development.”

Bones feels his face growing red. “You pointy-eared hobgoblin,” he retorts. Spock merely looks impassive. Bones considers getting up and stomping off for a moment, but neither Spock nor Jim would be impressed, and, frankly, he’s still hungry.

He gives up.

“Let me try a bite of what you’re having.”

Spock’s eyebrows creep above his hairline, but he allows Jim to reach over and nudge his tray towards Bones. Len sticks in his fork, puts in into his mouth, and considers. On a normal day he would have said it was utterly bland, and that he didn’t like the grainy texture of the sauce. However, there’s also something too it that tastes the way it smells, savory and rich.

“What did you call this, again?”

“Klitanta k’forati-mun. Doctor, if you wish me to replicate a second serving..?”

“Yeah, please, Spock.”

Spock gets up from the table without another word, taking Len’s old tray with him and putting it onto the recycler as he walks by. Kirk merely looks at him, biting his lips as if to keep from laughing.

“Up yours, Jim,” Len says, good naturedly. 

He asks Spock to keep ordering for him until he starts to build up a repertoire of Vulcan recipes that taste good. It hardly seems worth mentioning to Sarek, until the Ambassador happens to walk through the mess hall on an occasion when McCoy is slurping his way through a large bowl of plomeek soup. Sarek raises an eyebrow, and Len tries resolutely not to feel like a kid whose hand has been caught in the cookie-jar.

 

 

The day after his eight-week checkup, the Enterprise happens to be in direct alignment for a subspace channel to Earth. Georgia, seven pm, falls during the middle of gamma shift; so Len sets an alarm to wake him up at the proper time. Jocelyn will be able to see from the signature that it’s him; and though he suspects she’d sometimes prefer not to answer, she almost always does.

It’s Clay’s face, however, that appears when the call is answered, he must be using Jos’ comm. There’s just a little bit of lag on the line. 

“Leonard!” Clay says, all false joviality. Len doesn’t blame him for injecting false enthusiasm into their interactions, trying to make the whole damn thing less awkward. At the moment, though, he hasn’t the energy to play along.

“Clay.” He pauses. “Joss there?”

“Out running errands.”

“Ah. Joanna?”

“In her bedroom.” Clay appears to think for a moment. “I can get her, if you want.”

“That would be great, thanks.”

Say what you will about Joss and Clay –Len has said, or at least thought, a lot of things about them over the years – but he’s grateful for the fact that they’ve never turned Joanna against him, never encouraged her to stop being Daddy’s little girl. He sees her maybe twice or three times a year – in a very good year – and he’d have understood it if she’d have stopped calling him Daddy, maybe given that title over to Clay. She calls him ‘Clay’, though, least every time Len’s every heard them talking. She always sounds happy to talk to him.

“Dad!” Her face appears in his screen. God, she’s changed every time he sees her- her hair’s pulled back to reveal a long and slender neck, the baby fat she seemed to put on a little before her growth spurt’s a thing of the past. Only thirteen and she looks like her mother; a real woman, elegant. He wonders if she’s comfortable in her own skin, whether she gets a lot of attention at school. She always seems happy, in her letters and when they talk over the comm, but it’s so hard to really tell. 

“How’s it going, sweetie?”

“Great!” She’s off on a story at once, her grades in school are good and she’s thinking of Cerberus for high school. It’s a good program and the counselors think she has a decent chance of getting in. Mom and Clay don’t like it, but she can’t stay in Georgia forever. “I’m like you, Dad” she tells him, big eyes earnest. “I want to travel.”

“Aw, princess.” He tries to think how to explain to her, how he would have been perfectly fine, thank you, not spending years of his life with only a layer of metal between himself and space. It’s been a good time and a good career but every time he sees her face he can’t help but think for a moment he’d trade it all in for a quiet family life in Georgia, giving the local kids their vaccinations and then coming home to push her on the tire swing on perfect summer evenings, just as the hot and humid air starts to cool. She’s too old for tire swings now anyways; it doesn’t matter, but wherever she got that wandering spirit from it sure ain’t him and it sure as anything wasn’t Joss, either. He’ll support her, though, in anything she wants to do, because his heart nearly bursts every time from the look of her. 

“Dad…?”

He nods. “Maybe we can talk about it when I get back on Earth?”

She squeals. “When are you coming?”

This is it, he thinks. “Soon. And I’m staying, it looks like I’ll be based in San Francisco again.” 

She thinks about this, and he can see her thoughts opening painted across her expression, each in turn. Excitement, confusion, worry. “But Dad,” She says. “Your mission still has another two years, right? Did something happen?”

It isn’t easy to say. “Nothing bad, honey. We’ll talk about it more when I arrive, but there’s something – well, it’s a change of plans.”

“Oh.” Her grave expression shifts away. “Top Secret?” She sounds hopeful.

He can’t bring himself to say it. “We’ll talk about it when I arrive.”

He gets a message across the screen warning that his twenty minutes are nearly up. “Alright, sweetheart. Sorry I’ve got to go – say hi to your Momma for me, ok?”

“Love you, Dad.”

God, she’s mercurial, a lady and then a little girl again. Thirteen years old – he wonders what he’s going to tell her. He wants her to be part of his life, can’t imagine shutting her out. He wonders what she’ll think of this pregnancy. Maybe she can come to visit him in San Francisco, stay some days. They can visit the parks together. 

He sets the lights to 30% and lies back on his bed, thinking that if he were his own patient, he’d prescribe light physical activity, and social stimulation, rather than time alone in a dark room. Thank God everyone’s allowing him more space than that, then.

 

 

“You know, you can stay here,” Jim says, as Len is packing his bags up. “I’ve been talking about it with Pike, and Admiral Constantine. There’s this idea now that for psychological stability we should be allowing crew members in peace time to bring their families aboard. They’re looking for a couple of pilot projects.”

Len looks at him, and Jim knows he’s thinking of all the times they’ve been sliced up, shot at, infected with viruses or almost lost their minds. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” he asks, bluntly.

Jim frowns. “Our mission only has another two years on it,” he says, finally. “So it wouldn’t be forever.”

“It’s not good for the kid, Jim. Even with the shielding, something might go wrong. And once it’s born, Christ, it isn’t safe.”

“I was born in space,” Jim points out, stubbornly. 

“And you’re allergic to everything from penicillin to peanuts.” Bones frowns. “Sorry, Jim, that was uncalled for. I mean, I just can’t take any chances, ok?”

It’s true, as a matter of fact, that Jim’s allergies are likely related to the time he spent in an escape pod, inadequately shielded from subspace radiation, when he was a few hours old. But then, it’s not like his parents knew that was going to happen. Winona did the same thing with both her pregnancies, staying aboard from conception to delivery. In Sam’s case, he’d been sent back to stay with George’s grandmother soon after birth. Jim gets it, really: the great love of his mother’s life was her husband, not her sons, and she didn’t want to be away from him for all those months. 

“I’ll miss you,” Bones says, unexpectedly. “I don’t think I was ever cut out for adventures the way you and Spock and the rest of y’all are, but I’m glad I had the opportunity. And you damn well better visit every single time you’re at HQ, is that clear?”

“Of course.” 

They send Bones and Sarek down to San Francisco in a shuttle – time is tight and the crew doesn’t get a chance for shore leave themselves. Jim can’t help but feel a little resentful of the kid that’s taking his best friend away, or maybe just a little bit jealous that it’s going to have something he didn’t. 

 

 

Leonard blinks into the bright California sunlight as disembarks. A moment later, Sarek steps off the shuttle behind him. Len feels a barely perceptible shiver of pleasure run through the bond, which he realizes after a moment that it’s Sarek’s response to the sun. It really is pleasant, Len has to admit – California weather is always perfect, and starship lights, no matter how carefully calibrated, can’t compare to the feeling of real Sol. 

“Daddy!” He hears a girl cry, and for a moment he’s thinking it’s someone else’s little girl, calling out to one of the other passengers. But then he sees brown hair and a thin preteen streaking towards him, and oh, he realizes, it’s Joanna. He feels Sarek stiffen beside him, but before he even has time to drop his bags, she’s hugging him.

“Dad!” She says. “Did we surprise you! I wanted to come see you, Mom promised not to tell…” Len looks past her shoulder and see Joss standing at the edge of the tarmac. She gives him a nervous little wave. 

“That’s great!” He says. “You’ve gotten so tall, I can’t believe it!” And she really is, she’s all legs and arms now, practically a teenager, probably six inches taller than the last time he was on Earth. He shrugs off his bags to give her a real bear hug, and when her cheek brushes the stubble of his cheek, she giggles, just like when she was a little girl.

“I hope you don’t mind, Len,” Joss comes over. “But she really wanted too and I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind…”

“No, no, it’s great,” Len says, hurriedly. “It’s great to see you guys.” He still told them yet – couldn’t figure out how to say it over the comm. – and now he wonders if it’s obvious, it he merely looks like he’s gotten pudgy, or if she can see the rounding belly beneath his loose shirt. “Ah, Joss, Jo, this is Sarek, he’s a,” he fumbles for a second. “a friend”. Sarek nods. “Now, since you’ve come all the way here, are you hungry, Jo? Maybe we can get pizza!”

Joss gives them a lift in her hovercar to the Starfleet housing where Len is going to stay, and then he directs her to Gremlin’s pizza place, one of his and Jim’s old favorites when they were cadets. Joanna eats slice after slice of cheese and pepperoni, putting it Len-has-no-idea-where on her thin frame, chattering all the while about friends at school, what subjects she likes and what subjects she doesn’t, looking up at her Dad anxiously every few minutes, as if wanting to reassure herself that he is really there in front of her. All three adults are quieter, letting her fill up the space. 

“And, maybe this summer, I can come and stay with you in San Francisco?” Joanna asks, at the end of a very long sentence that had mostly been about something else, and Len has to pause and collect himself.

“Yeah, Jo, that would be nice.” He thinks for a minute, then looks at Joss deliberately. “Maybe she can come in June, after the baby’s born, and help out with things.”

Joss opens her mouth, but before she can reply Joanna is asking, “What baby? What baby, Dad?” and then her mother asks, gently, “When are you due, Len?”

“End of April,” he says, glad to have it out on the table. He looks at his daughter, holding his breath to see how she will respond.

After a second, a preadolescent shriek fills Gremlin’s, causing every red-suited cadet in the place to look around. 

“Dad, you’re pregnant???” and then, 

“I’m going to be a sister?!!!”

Then the barrage of questions hits.

“Is it a boy or a girl? What are you going to name her? How come you never told me you could get pregnant?” She eyes him and then Sarek assessingly. “Is Sarek your boyfriend?”

“It’s complicated, Jo,” Leonard says. He looks across the table to Joss, who is watching him with more reserve – concern in her eyes. “I didn’t know.” He says to her. “I mean, about being a carrier – for most that you and I were together.”

She nods, and then, unexpectedly, she laughs – not in a mean way, but light and free. “I loved being pregnant with Joanna,” she says.

“Mo-om!” 

“Well, I did, sweetheart – I could feel you moving around all day – when there was music sometimes you used to dance, in my stomach.” She looked at Len. “I hope you enjoy it, too.”

There’s a lot he wants to say to her – more that he wants to say but shouldn’t – none of it matters, really, in the end, because they’ve gotten to this point where they know each other well enough in any case.

“I hope you’re taking care of him, Sarek,” Joss says, and Sarek imperturbably nods. 

“You should let me name the baby,” Joanna decides. 

They stay in San Francisco until late that evening. Len and Sarek see them back to the rail station, and then they are left, outside the station, breathing in the cool night air.

“Your daughter appears to be adequately developed for a human of her years,” Sarek offers. Leonard is beginning to recognize this as a kind of extremely dry humor, not unlike Spock’s own, and he responds by scoffing.

“I will see you to your apartment,” Sarek says. Len is staying in Starfleet housing.

“Don’t worry about it,” Len yawns. “It’s in the opposite direction from the Vulcan Consulate.”

“Nevertheless, Doctor,” 

“I’ll be fine on my own,” he says, firmly.

Without asking, Sarek flags a taxi, and follows Leonard into it.

Len’s in too good a mood, from seeing Joanna, and too tired, to otherwise kick up a fuss. 

 

 

He remembers Stephanie Iemoto vaguely as having been a year or two ahead of him at the academy. She’s a tall, good-looking woman, black hair tied back in a functional but nevertheless attractive knot. Len knows the type: a gunner, they used to call them back in med school, someone bloodily career-minded. 

“I’m excited to have been assigned your case,” she tells Len, when they first meet – Sarek’s off doing something-or-other at the Vulcan Embassy – “It’s so interesting. Only the fourth case of a Vulcan/Human hybrid since S’chn T’gai Spock.” The she says Spock’s name reminds Len that, in her circles, Spock is still most famous as a medical experiment, for his birth, than for any of his many achievements subsequent. It makes him almost feel bad for the pointy-eared bastard, for a second, until he realizes that he himself is now probably in exactly the same boat. 

“And the other father is, ah-” it’s on the padd in front of her already, she just wants Len to confirm it.

“S’chn T’gain Sarek,” Len says.

“Hmm, how interesting. That’s also the name of S’chn T’gain Spock’s father…” Len is beginning to think that he doesn’t like this doctor: she should just come out and ask her question directly, rather than hinting around as she’s doing.

“The same man, yes,” he grinds out.

“If you don’t mind my asking, how did you two…” sentence trailing off, instead of saying what she wants to say, he thinks, another habit he despises.

He’s agreed not talk about the pon farr with his human doctors; Sarek and the Vulcans want to keep things private. So he grinds out their lamely-constructed cover story. “As you know, I serve on the Enterprise with Commander Spock, which is how I met his father…” he trails off, consciously mimicking her habit. Iemoto leans in, clearly waiting for more details. After a minute like this, during which Len stays silent, she sits back again.

“Alright, well. I’ve looked over the charts send by Doctor M’Benga… everything seems to be on track. I’d just like to run a few more tests today, and then maybe we can set up a schedule for future visits.”

Grumpily, he submits to the standard battery of scans. Iemoto keeps up a partial commentary on what she observes, and Len has to admit, as she notes the levels of organ-cupric compounds in his system, and correctly links them to his recent taste for Vulcan food, that she really does know her stuff.

“Now, this is interesting,” she says. “Doctor McCoy, how have your breasts been feeling?”

“My breasts?”

“Sorry, bad choice of words. Your chest?”

Tender, Len thinks. “I haven’t really noticed anything.”

“Hmmm... it appears that the volume of tissue is increasing, and you have measurable, although low, concentrations of circulating prolactin. Dr. McCoy,” she says, smiling at him as though it’s just ducky, “I think you’re going to be able to breastfeed!”

Len frowns. “We’ll see,” he says, finally. 

“Everything else seems to be good, as well,” she says. Len hops off the table and pulls his shirt down. “I’ll see you next week, then.” She pauses. “Also – maybe it’s too early to bring this up, but as a scientist yourself…” she pauses meaningfully. “I would be interested in publishing your case. Given that it’s the first Vulcan/Human pregnancy to involve a male carrier, I’m sure you would agree that it would be of great medical import…”

“No,” Len says, shortly.

He doesn’t expect any argument from her – he understands his rights as a patient, well as she does – so he’s a bit surprised when she opens her mouth, closes it, and then crosses her arms and looks at him with a soft, but vaguely patronizing air.

“Dr. McCoy, you yourself have published countless case studies over the years, so surely you can’t be opposed...”

“I publish only when I have the enthusiastic consent of the patient ,” he gives her a hard stare. “And actually, Dr. Iemoto, there have been countless cases that I haven’t published, for the same reason.”

She frowns. “I’m aware of your work, of course – you had three articles in the New England Journal of Medicine in the past year. Surely, as a fellow doctor…”

“Dr. Iemoto,” Leonard says, slowly and clearly. “I have no doubts as to your qualifications to take this case – but there are other physicians in San Francisco that could also do just as well.” She opens her mouth to argue, but Len plows on. “I understand that, in terms of your career, a publication like this could be a big benefit to you – but I do not, and will not, provide consent for any aspects of my case to be shared. So if that’s your reason for doing this, I think it would be better for me to go looking for another obstetrician. "

“No, of course that’s not my reason!” Iemoto exclaims. “I only thought that you – as a doctor, Dr. McCoy – would be pleased.”

“Well, I’m not.” Len says. “And I would prefer not to have this conversation again”.

 

 

Spock comms him a few days later. Len is surprised – he was expecting Jim to be the correspondent more than Spock.

“Doctor,” Spock says. “How are you… settling in?” he pronounces the phrase carefully, maybe it’s one he’s picked up from Jim, “in San Francisco.”

“Good,” Len says. “The weather is nice. Your Dad went to the Embassy this morning; I think he’s got work piled up already.”

Spock nods. “And you, doctor?”

“The cadets never get older,” he complains. “Fresh out of residency, they can explain the theory behind growing and grafting a kidney but not manage basic triage. I’m going to divide my time between trying to teach them some goddamn common sense, and trying to catch up on the case studies I have backed up.”

Spock frowns. “Doctor, I would assume that you are not planning on working more than twenty hours per week, is that inaccurate?”

Leonard’s eyes narrow – he’s beginning to see where this is going. Spock is a million light-years away, for Chrissake.

“I understand,” Spock continues, earnestly, “that human male carrier pregnancies are almost invariably more stressful than their female equivalent, and that it is advisable for you not to overtax yourself-” 

Len can’t help himself, he cuts the comm.

 

 

The problem is that male bodies really aren’t built for pregnancy. His stomach juts outward- there’s no room for the fetus to nestle between his hips – so that, even at six months, he’s beginning to look enormous. He tolerates the looks people give him as he waddles by – concern, mostly, that he’s going to tip over in front of them, and then what will they do?”

His uniform, even re-sized, tends to bunch above and below the bulge, which makes it look even larger than it actually is, so he takes to wearing white lab coats over top of them.

He meets with Sarek every morning, usually at the Vulcan Embassy, for Sarek’s hour of fetal communion. Sarek is always waiting for him in the lobby, and his manner, when ushering McCoy past the curious onlookers, leans strongly towards possessive. When they are alone together, in one of the Vulcan-style gardens of yellow sand and spicy incense, he strokes Len’s stomach until he finds the position of the fetus. The heat piped into those gardens leads Len to fall asleep entirely, and he often finds that he oversleeps the sessions, because neither Sarek, nor any of the other Vulcans, will wake him. 

He gets progressively bigger and bigger, and slower and slower, although he stubbornly holds onto his classes at the Academy – although it reaches the point that he has a chair brought in so that he can sit while he lectures. Sarek (and Spock) remains suspicious that he is still keeping too many late nights, but in truth it’s all Len can do to stay away for a normal workday – he’s in bed by seven, some nights, and can barely pull himself awake again twelve or fourteen hours later. His back hurts, his ankles are swollen, and his belly is pushing down on his bladder so heavily that he can’t go more than thirty or forty minutes without heading to the bathroom. Iemoto determines that, while his body is attempting to lactate, it isn’t in sufficient quantities, or of the right nutritional formulation, to be healthful to the baby. She is disappointed by this discovery, Len is extremely glad. 

By nine months, he’s ready for it to be over, but Iemoto is estimating that he has four to six weeks left to go. Sarek says that the fetus is healthy, but concurs that she is not ready to be born. The academy term finally ends, and he is able to make a quiet retreat, therefore, into complete medical leave. 

 

 

Labor finally happens on a Monday. One morning he wakes with strange dreams, waddles into the kitchen to fry himself an egg, and feels a stiff, dull cramp overtake him. It isn’t unlike others he’s felt in the past few weeks, but, when the next comes along, and after a while, another, he becomes suspicious.

He knows Sarek is at the door before it rings, a facet of their bond which never fails to unnerve him. But when he rises from the couch to answer, all the blood rushes to his head, and he sways. 

He hears Sarek enters, and his voice saying, “Doctor,” just before he passes out. His last thought before the world goes black is; what are two old men like us going to do with a baby, anyway?

 

 

When he wakes up, it’s against a background of the most absolutely appalling wailing. He spends a few minutes lying there, disoriented, before he realizes that it’s real, and then it’s a while more before opening his eyes seems doesn’t seem an overwhelming task.

His first view is of white ceiling. His body is a mixture of soreness and numbness, but nothing more, and takes a moment to be thankful for the miracles of modern medical technology. 

He turns his head towards the incessant noise. Sarek is there, sitting stiffly. The infant tucked in his arms is nearly olive in complexion, shrieking her indignation. Len feels a spike of worry, surely that color is too deep. Maybe there’s something wrong with her.

“She is healthy, doctor,” Sarek replies to his emotion as if it were a spoken question, Len is too tired to more than weakly resent the intrusion. “She is merely agitated.” 

Nodding or speaking requires too much work, Len blinks in response. “I thought a part-Vulcan would be quieter,” he finally manages, his voice sounding raspy in his ears. Joanna was a quiet baby, he remembers, she fell asleep soon after being born. 

“A common misconception; without training Vulcans are highly emotional. In fact Vulcan infants are perhaps more even more volatile than their human counterparts.” Sarek pauses. “She is disoriented and seeks reassurance.”

There’s a message in there, Len’s pretty sure, but he’s too tired to figure out what Sarek’s trying to say. He looks at the infant a moment more and then closes his eyes again. 

He hears someone enter, Ishimoto’s voice saying, “And how are our patients doing? Is Leonard awake yet?”

She can see, of course, from the sensors that he is. He supposes that if he refuses to deal with her, he’ll be labeled difficult. Reluctantly, Len opens his eyes again. Seeking Sarek with that small green baby is still disconcerting.

“How do you feel, Leonard?”

“Tired.”

“That’s to be expected. You’ll be pleased to hear, everything went even better than expected.” She pauses as if she expects him to congratulate her on her success. Len waits. 

“Do you feel well enough to try sitting up?”

He does, but he’d rather stay lying down. Still, he doesn’t want to give Ishimoto more fodder for the paper he’s still sure she’ll find a way to write eventually. He gives himself a moment and pushes himself up. 

“Great!” She enthuses. “Would you like to try holding her?”

Sarek rises, and brings to infant over. He’s not sure how he feels about this, but Len reaches out his arms. As she is placed in his arms, she ceases to wail. 

She’s small, lots of hair on her head, black but, Len notices, a bit wiry in texture, which is sort of like his. She holds her head up pretty well; she doesn’t seem as floppy as most babies. Her eyes are large and pale green, but when she looks at him, they are focused, unlike a human newborn. He wonders if her eyes will change color, he doesn’t feel like asking. As she calms, the baby’s olive skin pales to a shade like Spock’s, which could almost be mistaken for human. 

“She must be happy to be with you.” Ishimoto says. “That’s the first time she’s stopped crying.”

“Indeed,” Sarek responds. “Her telepathic abilities allow her to identify Dr. McCoy instinctively.”

Iemoto nods. “What will you name her?”

McCoy ignores her. The baby has small pointed ears and delicately arched brows. As he looks at her, she watches him in return, although after some moments she closes her eyes and purses her lips as if suckling. Len looks around for a bottle, and feels both relieved and a bit annoyed when Ishimoto is able to supply him one immediately. When he pushes the nub lightly to her lips she latches on immediately, sucking so hard that he wonders if she’ll throw up from going too fast; Joanna used to do that too.

“We’ll have to monitor her closely these first weeks, “Iemoto is saying. “The formula is a synthesis of human breast milk and essential Vulcan vitamins, but obviously our experience here is limited as to what she really needs.”

“It is a slight modification of earlier formulations created by the Vulcan Science Academy,” Sarek says stiffly. “There is no reason to doubt its nutritional adequacy.”

“Of course not, of course,” Iemoto soothes. Len continues to ignore her, as does Sarek. He appreciates the way the Ambassador wields the silence, prolonging it until Ishimoto has no choice but to go. Sarek returns to his chair by Leonard’s bedside. 

The little girl finishes her bottle. Len hoists her over his shoulder and pats her back; she soon falls asleep. It’s alarming how quickly and fiercely this feeling of attachment has come on; this little girl is truly his.

“I leave the naming to your discretion, Doctor,” says Sarek.

Her little back is hot against his shoulder. 

“I also want you to be involved in the processes,” Len says, finally. “That is, if you want to be. I don’t know how Vulcans do it, but we can give her one of each – a Vulcan name and a human one.”

“That is acceptable. I suggest T’Mir,” Sarek says. 

“Hmmm.” Len says. He can feel something from the infant, a sort of sleepy/warm/fullness that wasn’t there a moment before. “I think she’s projecting in her sleep.”

Sarek’s eyebrows raise, but he comes over to touch a finger to the back of her tiny hand. His face softens, the nearest Len’s ever seen to a smile. “I believe you are correct.”

“T’Mir has a nice sound to it,” Len says, thoughtfully. “It reminds me of Miranda. T’Mir McCoy.”

Sarek projects through to him, lightly and carefully, his feeling of pleasure.

 

 

Some days, he’s so tired that he has no idea how he drags himself out of bed in the morning, then again, a few hours later, and then a third time, all before the sun comes up. T’Mir sleeps only a few hours at a time, and Len honestly doesn’t remember it ever being so much work with Joanna – in hindsight, he’s not sure if he ever realized before how much work Jos was doing. 

Despite this, he rejects, several times, Sarek’s suggestion that he move into the Vulcan Embassy – he’s not sure he’d be able to keep it together under the watchful eye of nearly a handful Vulcans, constantly suggesting ways to improve his parenting technique. Sometimes, especially at nights, when he’s given up and brought T’Mir into bed with him, and she’s drifted off peacefully and he’s still awake – it does feel lonely, staring up at the white ceiling and walls of the Starfleet cookie-cutter apartment that means nothing to him, in a city that has no particular significance either. 

That’s what he’s always missed about Joss: not her presence, because they were always snipping and fighting, but rather the sense of belonging: they were both from Cordele, they were both planted in the land, with their ancestors behind them and their children in front.

Now his clan is one small, pointy-eared baby-girl-child larger, and by extension, it has also stretched over to the Vulcans, who look out for him in ways that are sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, and nearly always strange. 

Sarek, he is not surprised to learn, is more or less the kind of father Len had been with Joanna – content to leave the practical work of child-rearing to the other partner. After Len’s had particularly bad night he typically comms over a reiteration of his offer of an apartment for Len on diplomatically-defined Vulcan soil, - after the third or fourth time Len has refused, he just shows up, one afternoon with a young Vulcan woman staring stiffly behind him.

“This is T’Lal.” Sarek explains. “She will assist you in whatever capacity you require.”

Len tries to refuse, but then T’Mir cries and he has to go to get her, and in the midst of that Sarek somehow manages to leave the girl and slip out the door. He makes tea, and through a careful, indirect conversation of the kind he does not like but is getting good at deciphering anyway, he figures out that T’Lal is the most junior of the diplomatic corp currently assigned to Earth, and that she is on the verge of a Vulcan panic attack because her entire career, apparently, now rests on her capacity to make leave a good impression on Ambassador Sarek’s extremely eccentric and temperamental human mate. Len takes pity on her, and also discovers that she is pretty good with T’Mir. 

After he sees her out, he comms Sarek, and rips him a new one for using his position to exploit a highly-educated underling, by forcing her to act as nurse-maid. Sarek responds that T’Lal is competent but requires additional exposure to human idiosyncrasy, and that he regards this as highly applicable training to her future career. Len grumbles and argues awhile longer, but frankly he’s tired and they finally agree that no more than fifteen hours a week of her time might be not-unreasonable.

When T’Mir is turns three months, Joanna comes, for her last summer before leaving Earth for high school. She makes lumpy pancakes and oatmeal cookies, studies Len’s old textbooks, and one afternoon he comes home from a quick run to the office to find that she’s coaxed T’Lal into hazarding a few observations about the male cadets who frequently pass below the apartment’s balcony on their way to class. Len lets himself into the apartment quietly, amused until he realizes that one of the boys has stopped, and appears to be yelling something flirtatious back to them. 

It’s hard to look intimidating with a baby strapped to your chest, and no shotgun to polish, but he managed to send the young man scooting off anyway. 

 

 

“We’re coming to San Francisco,” Jim says, sunnily. It’s a late-night comm., a result of the differences between Enterprise shifts and time zones on Earth: but convenient for Len, who had a late shift at the hospital, and was just paying the babysitter as the comm came in. It’s strange to see Jim sitting in his office, lights full bright like it’s the middle of the day, while here in San Francisco it’s dark and quiet. 

“Spock has accepted a teaching position at the academy, and I’m going to split my time between there and the Kelvin Institute.” 

Len isn’t exactly surprised, but it’s not what he’s been expecting, either. At the end of the Enterprise’s five-year mission, everyone will be up for promotion: Sulu, Chekov and Uhura are probably in line for first-officer positions, if they want them; Spock is in for a captaincy and Jim an admiral’s pips. But Len knows that Jim likes to be out there exploring the universe, and also that there’s no way he and Spock would chose to be on different ships – so he’s been half-suspecting they’ll turn down the honors, and do another tour together.

On the other hand, Spock has always been more an academic-type than Jim, and Len’s gotten the impression, here and there – the long hours they spend on the comm, babbling at Miri, for one thing – that they wouldn’t mind being a little bit more settled down for a while. 

“That’s great,” he says, and then adds carefully, “I hope it’s what you want.”

“It is,” Jim says, firmly, and then adds, “I hear you were offered a chance to go to Capella?”

“Yeah. It seems like they’re finally opening up to the possibility of medical intervention there. The new Teer is liberal, he’s invited Starfleet to send a delegation of scientists to look into which diseases might be preventable with federation technology.”

“And he specifically asked for you.”

Len shrugs. “I had to say no, though,” he nods towards Miri’s bedroom, “what with the rugrat and all. Can’t quite see taking her to Capella just yet.”

“Sarek?” 

“He’s going back to New Vulcan. We talked about it… she’s old enough, it’s probably best for everyone.”

Jim is silent for a moment. Then he says, casually, “We could take her, for a while.”

“If I went to Capella? Jim, it could be 4, 6 months.”

“I know. We talked about it. We would like too.”

Len considers. Tentatively, he says, “Jim, I know you and Spock love Miri like she’s your own, but a kid is kind of…” he thinks of all the trouble she’s gotten into, just that day: she tipped over her cereal, in the morning, all over the floor , tried to bodily throw herself off the table, she has no proper sense of self-preservation, and cried for over an hour when he took an old hypospray she’d somehow gotten a hold of away from her. It confuses him all the more because her language skills are so advanced, somehow it’s a challenge to reconcile her small voice saying, “Daddy, I would like the red brick now, and then the blue one,” with the screaming, frenetic one-year-old she can become a moment later. 

“That’s just it,” Jim says. “We love Miri. We’d like to do this. Spock’s already working out some kind of rotation scheduled so that one of us could be with her all the time.”

Len feels his face soften. “Sure. It would be a big change for her, but maybe it would be good.” 

Jim’s face breaks into a smile, honest and bright, before he cuts off the comm.

 

 

They break the bond on a Thursday. The Adept of Gol who has come all the way from New Vulcan to see it done right, peers into both their minds, declares them to be an unwise pairing, and separates them, as cleaning as if a sword is swung between them. Instantly Len feels better – his head clearer, that buzzing that was Sarek’s impenetrable, grave alien mind, gone.

Only T’Mir doesn’t like it – she cries and cries- but the Adept assures them that no harm is caused to her by breaking the bond between her parents: she is old enough now, and her own psychic centers well enough developed, to function independently without her parents. 

Sarek leaves a week later, on a transport to New Vulcan. As soon as he leaves he begins writing regularly, long, rather complicated missives, the first of which arrives on Len’s padd only hours after his transport has taken off. Afterwards, they come without fail each Wednesday afternoon. Miri learns to play over and over. She touches Sarek’s face on the viewscreen, while he talks, and Len knows that she misses him, just as any Miranda would her Prospero. 

 

 

Spock first meets his half-sister, T’Mir, in person, when she is two years of age. The maiden voyage of the starship Enterprise has come to an end, and he is sitting in Dr. McCoy’s living room. T’Mir is standing next to her father, thumb in mouth, looking wary. Finally she comes over, and says, to Spock, in Vulcan, “up!”

Spock lifts her onto his lap. Their faces are quite close together. “Who are you?” T’Mir asks him.

“I am Spock,” he answers.

“Wow, the kid speaks Vulcan,” Jim observes, and Leonard says, “yeah, I drop her off at the Vulcan Embassy’s daycare while I’m in classes.”

“I am T’Mir,” she tells Spock. “Down!” 

He sets her onto the floor again, and she zips off, coming back with a stuffed animal.

“This is Suval,” she gives the animal to Spock, leaves, and then comes back with another. “This is Sorak.”

“She names them after the kids in her group,” the doctor explains. “Only the kids she likes, though.”

Spock looks at him, questioningly.

“Oh, they’re all fine,” McCoy says. “They’re two, three years old. Plus the teacher, T’Paril, is very good with her.

“Suval and I went to the park,” T’Mir tells Spock, reaching for his hand. Spock gives it to her, as one does with young children –she holds onto it tightly, enjoying the feel of contact between them. “Suval and I went to the park and I brought Suval who is my bear and Suval said I could not name Suval Suval because it was his name and I said no it is not illogical it is my bear Suval.”

“Affirmative,” Spock says. “Names are frequently assigned to multiple individuals.”

T’Mir gives a small smile, and says, “My father is Sarek-of-Vulcan but he is gone now and my other father is Leonard-Horacio-McCoy and my address is 546 Vallejo Street and if I am lost please call my father at 345432564.”

“This is very practical information,” Spock tells her.

She goes away, returning with yet a third animal.

“This is my panda bear and he was called Soran but now he will be called Spock.”

Spock inclines his head. “I am honored.”

 

 

Six months later, Bones takes his daughter’s hand, and carries her to the sunny apartment that Jim and Spock are renting in the suburbs. He leaves a suitcase full of her clothing and toys, plus the keys to his apartment just in case anything’s been forgotten. T’Mir clutches her Spock-the-Panda-bear as Bones scratches his chin, and tries to think of things he may have forgotten. 

“Are you sure about this?” He asks Jim for the millionth time.

“Sure,” says Jim. “We’ve handled Klingon birds of prey, haven’t we?” He smiles winningly at T’Mir. “And we’ve had her over night before. This is gonna be awesome, right, sweetie?”

T’Mir smiles at him. “Yes!” She shouts, and launches herself at his legs. 

“Ok, so I may have let her had a sip or two of my cocoa this morning,” Bones admits. “She’s kind of hyper. I’ll send letters. Are you really sure-“

“Yes, “ Jim says, again, patiently. 

“Ok,” Bones takes a deep breath, and looks down at his daughter. “You’ll be good, you hear, and listen to Uncle Jim and Uncle Spock!” 

T’Mir nods, although she keeps her face buried in Jim’s legs. 

“Five months,” Bones groans. “I don’t know, Jim, are you really sure?”

“Yes, Bones,”

“Kiss me goodbye, sweetheart.”

He lifts her up and hugs her as hard as he can. It nearly kills him to walk out the door, and, when, later on, he’s looking out the shuttle window into the black, all he sees is her small face reflected back at him. What keeps him from turning right around isn’t just all the lives he thinks he can save on Capella; it’s also how badly he knows Jim and Spock want to be close to Miri. 

 

 

Sarek comms him from Vulcan, to state that he has found a potential bondmate: a woman of about his own age, who also lost her previous partner on Vulcan. 

“It appears logical,” Sarek informs him, although his gaze is not on Leonard, but on Miri, who is squirming on Leonard’s lap. “Given that my last cycle, was of irregular timing, I cannot predict with accuracy when the next will occur. However, T’Anda has recently past the age at which conception is possible.”

Leonard mentally translates that as Sarek saying that he doesn’t want any more children, and nods his understanding.

“Everything is fine here,” he says. “Miri is doing well at nursery school – T’Paril is pleased with her progress. She’d like her to work a little bit harder on controlling her emotions, of course, but…,”Personally, Leonard could give a horse’s ass about all the logic stuff that the Embassy tutor keeps trying to force down Miri’s throat, although he’s putting up with it for now as a part of her ‘heritage’. Miri’s probably picked up on his distain, though, because her usually good attention span tends to lag during those lessons. 

Sarek regards her solemnly, and clears his throat.

“As you know,” he says, “My two older children were both trained in the ways of Surak. It is also the philosophy by which I have chosen to live my life. However,” He pauses, “As long as T’Mir continues to spends time in the company of Spock, I feel confident that she will receive instruction that will be adequate to – allow her to make her own choice.”

Leonard nods. Sarek has never offered to take T’Mir to New Vulcan – not that Leonard would necessarily be comfortable with that. But he can tell, when he sees how closely Sarek watches her, that he isn’t disinterested, either. 

He has to wonder if Sarek’s decision to return to New Vulcan, not long before Jim and Spock decided to permanently base themselves out of San Francisco, was really coincidence. Miri spends nearly half her time with them, these days. Jim and Spock are becoming her parents, just as much as he is. Especially Spock: Leonard can’t help but think, when he watches how carefully Spock instructs his daughter, that he is the most natural parent of the three.

When he thinks of Joanna, when he thinks of T’Mir: he wonders, what wouldn’t he do for his daughters? And by extension, what wouldn’t Sarek do for his children? 

Sometimes the greatest gifts are also the most unexpectedly given.


End file.
